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THE COMPLETE LIFE. Six Sermon-Lectures, from 
the Standpoint of Modern Thought. Cloth, square 
18mo, 112 pages, 60 cents. 

"They really have extraordinary merit."— A neiv Eng- 
land Unitarian minister. 

"A real feast. I do not know when I have read any- 
thing which I have enjoyed more thoroughly."— A reader 
in New York State. 

UPLIFTS OF HEART AND WILL. A Series of Re- 
ligious Meditations, or Aspirations, addressed to Earn- 
est Men and Women. Cloth, square 18mo, 50 cents. 

"Free from the mechanism of ritual or liturgy, and yet 
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revelation that shines through its clouds. The book 
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tian Register. 

VOICES OF YOUTH. "Holiday Idlesse, and other 
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square 12mo, 252 pages. $1.00. 

"As works of art these poems stand among the most 
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by a youthful writer in this or the Old World. They are 
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THE WORK OF A TRUE CHURCH. A Paper de- 
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the modern world. Pamphlet. Single copy, 6 cents. 
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**# Any of the above sent postpaid, on receipt of price, 
by CHARLES H. KERR & CO., Publishers, 175 Dearborn 
Street, Chicago. 

[See rear pages of this book for further writings, 
press-notices, etc.] 



THE COMPLETE LIFE 



Six Sermon- Cectures 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF MODERN THOUGHT 



y 



By JAMES H. WEST 

AUTHOR OF "UPLIFTS OF HEART AND WILL," '* VOICES 
OF YOUTH, 1 ' ETC., ETC. 



"This world— it means intensely, and means good ; 
To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 



tQ 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

175 Dearborn Street 

1888 



QH, who shall say, my brother and my friend! — 

Shall e'er again our feet together hie? 

Oh, blest the woodlands, blest the peaceful sky 
Where oft we two, light-hearted without end, 
Our eager way t as children might, would wend ! 

The first Spring fiowWs were those which met 
our eye. 

The hurrying, road-edged river running by 
Ne'er failed us once — its every nook and bend 
Fresh corners offered for our search and growth. 

But years are flying — though they still are grand! 
Be ready, friend ! Ere long, perchance, we go 
A farther road than any, where we both 

May solve the mystery of some other land, 
And wander joyous still, in quest to Know. 

Dultjth, Minnesota, June, 1883. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

The first three of these discourses in the form 
in which they have heretofore been printed, have 
met favor to a degree unexpected by their author. 
The first one, in its pamphlet edition, has reached 
its sixth thousand. The last three have not 
before been in type. A few of the six have been 
given, as addresses, in various places through 
New England and the West, and all of them have 
been used publicly more than once. Concerning 
the last one, it may be said in one sense to " have 
a history," — inasmuch as its delivery here and 
there in New England, in 1883, brought upon its 
author, from those in ecclesiastical authority, the 
demand that he should never again speak in the 
pulpits of a certain "liberal " religious denomina- 
tion ! Re-reading it now, as it goes to press, 
after five years and more have passed, the author 
finds little in it that he would care to change, — 
except possibly, here and there (as in the case, 
indeed, of others of the discourses here gathered), 
the theistic terminology. But who, in whatever 
form of words, and especially in the matter in 
hand, shall express the inexpressible, and do it 
to his own satisfaction or the satisfaction of 
any other ! Let none, however (if the author 
may here anticipate a criticism of his work), say 
that these discourses are either "theistic" or 
"atheistic." For, in the narrow sense in which 
the words just written are most often used, the 
lectures are neither. They are universal. 

5 



vi Prefatory Note. 

It would not be just to many of the most help- 
ful leaders of modern thought if no acknowledge- 
ment were here made of the author's indebtedness 
to them,— sometimes not only for inspiring 
thought, but also for actual expression, even 
where, as a result of interlineation or an import- 
ant change of phrase, no marks of appropriation 
are shown. In addition to the scientific and 
other writers here and there quoted by name in 
the text, the author wishes especially to mention 
Lecky, O. B. Frothingham, John Fiske, William 
J. Potter, and John W. Chadwick, as sources, in 
a general way, of much of his whole endeavor as 
an independent minister. And right here, how- 
ever odd the place, he would like to say that what 
modern American progress in religious thought 
owes to the four fine minds last named, only 
future results of good to men will show. But the 
wreath is theirs, if invisible ; and if, as in the case 
of Parker and Emerson, they never wear it in life, 
it will be accorded them in due time. 

Dttluth, Minnesota, June, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 

The Complete Life, 9 

The Helper- On, - 83 

Moral Purpose, 49 

The Deification of Man, 63 

Equilibrium, 79 

"The Holy Spirit;" 93 



7 



The Complete Life. 

A life complete — that is, a lire perfect — has 
always been, in some sort, the aim and endeavor 
of the serious ones among men, since first, far 
back, man looked upward and out and dreamed of 
the perfect; dreamed that the better and the best 
might come to be. Since first he looked within his 
own expanding soul, and m^t there the Moral 
Ideal ever rebuking the evil in him, and urging 
him on to new attainment. 

And not only have the men who are distinctive- 
ly cnlled " religionists " labored to this end. The 
scientific worker and thinker, equally with the 
religious worker and thinker, has urged upon 
men the duty of completeness — of perfection. 
To be sure, the method, the means, which 
science has proposed lias been very different, 
oftentimes, from the method or means proposed 
by theology. Bat the end to be gained has al- 
ways, in the closer view, been the same in the 
case of both. 

Many people have not thought this to be a 
fact — have not seen the matter in the proper 
light. But consider the point a moment. What 
is it that theologians have always demanded? 
What has been the cry of the church through 
all the ages? "Be ye reconciled to God." And what 
have the men of science demanded, in order that 
humanity might be " saved "? What is the cry of 
science to the world to-day, echoing above all the 
detail of discovery, echoing above all the minutiae 
of declaration of new truth? "Men should 
come into accord with their environment"; — 

9 



10 The Complete Life. 

into accord with the highest, truest life-forces 
known, and with the universe's developing soul- 
forces. 

Theology says "God." Science says u Nature." 
But both say " Come.' 1 Both speak of harmony, of 
communion, of accord — declaring that out of such 
harmony there is no peace, no beauty, no per- 
fection, no completeness, while in such harmony 
there is peace and completeness. "Reconcilia- 
tion," — perfect " reconciliation, " — this, says the 
one, is perfection. Complete "harmony" — 
complete "adjustment" — this, says the other, 
is perfection. So that, in the last analysis, both 
lead, we see, to the same goal. The only 
difference is the difference between a speculative, 
rhetorical, energy-retarding child- world scheme, 
and a modern, intelligent, understandable, 
practicable method. In humanity's endeavor 
still for the attainment of a higher life, the words 
of old time come yet to all, — in this age with added 
force, — " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," 
— Theology or Reason! 

I will like to show, now, in passing, by a single 
vivid example, how science as well as religion 
(how science much more than "theology") is 
on the side of man's perfect life. 

Two or three years ago,* Herbert Spencer, 
the leading scientist of the world at the present 
day, was in this country for a few weeks. At 
the Farewell Banquet given in New York city 
iri his honor, just before his return to Europe, he 
made an address which attracted wide social and 
newspaper comment at the time, and which 
thinkers have not since allowed, at any period, 
to be forgotten. We still meet extracts from it 
in sermons and editorials; we shall continue to 
meet such, no doubt, for a long time to come. 
To quote one instance of the wide discussion ex- 

*This discourse was written in April of 18S5. 



The Complete Life. 11 

cited by Mr. Spencer's remarks on that occasion, 
we may recall that by the Independent, of New 
York city, the address was very adversely 
criticized, while by the Christian Union, of the 
same city, the philosopher's words were highly 
commended, and the Independent held up, in a 
certain degree, to reproach. The difference be- 
tween the two papers lay in this : one did not 
look at all to science for aid or encouragement in 
religion ; indeed, did not believe science could 
furnish such ; believed, rather, that its sole 
purpose, even in its fairest words, was to pull 
religion down: while the other stood ready to 
credit science with all its good, and to work with 
it so far as it might. The reply of the Union to 
the Independent (for the Union's article really 
amounted to a reply) was headed, "Herbert 
Spencer's Ideal of Life." And it began thus : 
"Hegel used to say, 'There is only one man in 
all the world who understands me, — and he 
doesn't ! ' Perhaps since his time there is none 
who might more justly make the same complaint 
than Herbert Spencer. There is less excuse, how- 
ever, for mistaking Spencer than was ever the 
case with Hegel. Self-constituted defenders of 
the faith, in every direction, seem to feel bound 
to find fault with everything the philosopher says, 
and to put an anti-Christian construction upon 
his every utterance, — simply because it is Herbert 
Spencer who says it." 

In this illustration, which I have thus given, 
Mr. Spencer stands but as a type of science as a 
whole,— to oppose which, in the mass, whether 
it be good or bad, as the Union well said, "self- 
constituted defenders" of an obsolete theology 
start up "in every direction." 

But just here let me quote a few sentences from 
Mr. Spencer's own address, which I will take from 
the authorized reprint of his remarks, published by 
the Appletons ; and then I will return, for 



12 The Complete Life. 

a moment, to the newspaper criticisms of which 
I have been speaking. Mr. Spencer, in his re- 
marks, had been hinting something of the world's 
mad rush, in these modern times, for place and 
power and education and wealth. Referring es- 
pecially to the people of the United States, — 

" It seems to me," he said, " that in one re- 
spect Americans have diverged too widely from 
savages. I do not mean to say that they are, in 
gen er al , unduly ci vilized . Thoughou t large parts 
of the population, even in long-settled regions, 
there is no excess of those virtues needed for the 
maintenance of social harmony. Men's dealings 
do not yet betray too much of the ' sweetness and 
light' which we are told distinguish the cultured 
man from the barbarian. Nevertheless, there is a 
sense in which the assertion is true. Eagerly 
pursuing a future good, man almost ignores 
what good the passing day offers him ; and, when 
the future good is gained, he neglects that while 
striving for some still remoter good. Every- 
where I have been struck with the number of 
faces which told in strong lines of the burdens 
that had to be borne. I do but echo the opinion 
of all the observant persons I have spoken to, 
when I say that immense injury is being done by 
this high-pressure life. We hear a great deal 
(in pseudo-religious circles) about ' the vile body ■ ; 
and many are encouraged thereby to transgress 
the laws of health. But Nature quietly sup- 
presses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of 
her highest products, and leaves the world to be 
peopled by the descendants of those who are not 
so foolish. Is this modern ideal to survive 
throughout the future? I think not. Life is not 
for learning, nor is life for working ; but learning 
and working are for life. Industry, bodily or 
mental, is but a means ; and it is as irrational to 
pursue industry to the exclusion of that complete 



The Complete Life. 13 

living which it subserves, as it is for the miser to 
accumulate money and make no use of it. Again, 
the primary use of 'knowledge* is for such 
guidance of conduct, under all circumstances, as 
shall make living complete. All other uses of 
knowledge are secondary. Hereafter, when this 
age of active material progress has yielded man- 
kind its benefits, there will be, I think, a better 
adjustment of labor and enjoyment." 

There is a great deal of grand wwcommon sense 
in that address. I wish I had time to quote it 
all to you. That is the kind of " discourse "which 
the world, to-day, waits to hear from the pulpit. 
It is the bread and fish which weary and despair- 
ing congregations would fain receive in place of 
the customary stone and serpent. But such a 
sermon is too unique — altogether too unconven- 
tional — to meet favor yet, at the hands of the 
generality of popular religionists. It deals too 
directly with human life ! We see no objection 
to it. Indeed, we deem it most excellent. But 
at the time when it was spoken it met loud 
opposition in many quarters. Said the Independ- 
ent, ominously, "It may be all very well as it 
stands ; but there is a great deal more than this 
which Mr. Spencer means to teach." 

This is the suspicious, hypercritical comment 
to which science is accustomed, even in its noblest 
utterances ! 

But what is it that Mr. Spencer "means to teach" ? 
The Union asked this question, and, discerning 
its answer, continued, Well, we fail to find any- 
thing so terrible even in that. The lion's claws 
of Mr. Spencer, under the velvet of his words, 
even when those claws are exposed to view, draw 
no blood. He u means to teach," the Independent 
would say, that "man's chief end is to make him- 
self as complete, as beautiful, and as happy as he 



H The Complete Life. 

Indeed a tremendous charge ! And what could 
the Union answer to this ? What could we answer 
to it ? From the standpoint of a certain false 
scheme of theology, this is indeed a serious mat- 
ter. No wonder that formal religionists were 
alarmed when Mr. Spencer spoke. But do we care 
to reply to the charge ? ' ' Man's chief end is to make 
himself as complete, as beautiful, and as happy 
as he can ! ' ' The perfect life, then, — the complete 
life, — word concerning which, for our strength 
and encouragement, we are striving to present in 
this discourse, — would be, according to Spencer, 
a life symmetrical, a life beautiful, a life happy ! 
Our chief end in this world — our main aim and 
endeavor — should be symmetry, beauty, happiness. 

Friends, however the old scheme of " theology " 
may deride such thought, is there not here, for 
us, an inspiration? From the standpoint of a 
rational religion, which has nothing to do with 
schemes of theology, is not this charge against 
science the crowning glory of science? Surely 
there is " nothing dangerous, nothing terrifying" 
in this. Indeed, the Union, with all its retention 
of much of the older thought, goes so far as to 
say, in opposition to the Independent, that there 
is nothing either "anti-biblical" or "anti-Chris- 
tian" in this ! In the broader view of both bible 
and Christianity, probably there is not. "Does 
not Jesus himself command," the Union well 
asks, "Be ye perfect (complete)"? And Paul, 
the early Christian apostle, exhorted those to 
whom he wrote, to strive to attain " unto a per- 
fect man," unto " the measure of the fullness " of 
the ideal. But the broader, universal view of bible 
and Christianity is not the view we most often 
meet. 

Moreover, the poets of the world, who are most 
always the world's prophets, — they too are in sym- 
pathy with science in this matter, as are the real 
bible and the earlier Christianity. I have time to 



The Complete, Life. 15 

quote but one. Longfellow, years ago, bade us, 
as our chief concern on earth, to 

"Make the house where Gods may dwell 

Beautiful, entire and clean. 
Else our lives are ^complete." 

After this manner have many of the bards spoken . 

And what is all this, whether ancient or mod ■ 
ern, — and I have not taken the opportunity, as I 
might take it, of quoting to you, in the same 
strain, from the Greeks, from the Persians and 
Hindus, — what is all this, but telling us, in dif- 
ferent forms, to make ourselves, as Spencer is 
charged with urging us to make ourselves, "as 
complete, as beautiful, and as happy as we can"? 
Moreover, the Union quotes further: " Completed ' ' 
That is the New-Testament word, all through, for 
the fruition of Christian experience, as Chris- 
tianity was first preached. " Beautiful %" The 
Greek word for goodness, as constantly used by 
the New-Testament writers, is " beautiful." And 
as to happiness, "joy" is one of the "fruits of the 
spirit" recognized by Paul ("Now the fruits of 
the spirit are these : love, joy," and so on). And 
in the frequent personal teachings of Jesus the 
thought is also recognized : for example, "These 
things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might 
remain in you and that your joy might be full." 
So that here we have science's most dreaded word 
— the word which, to the zealous ritualist, seems the 
most ultra egoism and utilitarianism — supported 
by the early leaders of that very faith which now 
derides it : " Man's chief end is to make himself 
as complete, as beautiful, and as happy as he can." 

It is difficult, for most of us of the wider 
thought, to see where the opposition to this can 
come in. But we know what the mediseval the- 
ology asserted. It said, and says still, "Man's 
chief end is to glorify God. 1 ' Recalling this, we 
catch a glimmer of light. We no longer wonder, 



16 The Complete Life. 

this in mind, that the earnest, unreasoning 
" churchman," from his standpoint, deems science 
and its teachings the 4k invention of Satan." I 
say the earnest unreasoning churchman. There 
are many thousands to-clay who exercise their 
reason, and thus stand far in the advance. Per- 
haps a very little candid thought easily reconciles, 
for such, "the glory of God" with man's own 
perfection and exaltation. Then, the way all be- 
comes clear. 

But much of all this latter treatment of our 
topic has been from the older, ecclesiastical stand- 
point. Going back now, just here, once more, 
and for the last time, to the newspaper argument, 
we are ready to admit (following the Union) that 
the charge that Spencer "means to teach" that 
happiness is an end of life — happiness, together 
with completeness and beauty — is not an unfair 
deduction from his writings. At the same time, 
no critic can deduce, from any words or works 
of the great philosopher, authority for saying that 
by "happiness" science means a low, sensuous, 
selfish form of happiness. Rather, it is the high- 
est, the most exalted form of it, which science 
would urge men to labor for. It is even that form 
of happiness which (as we have already seen) 
" the New Testament calls peace and joy." The 
happiness which comes from the complete equi- 
librium of all man's faculties and feelings with one 
another, and with his circumstances, — which 
comes from the approval of a pure conscience, 
and from peace, or harmony, with the over-ruling, 
interfused spirit of things, and with man. It is 
the highest possible happiness attainable by the 
soul. "If anything is clear to those who know 
aught about Herbert Spencer and his philosophy, 
it is that when he urges man to try to make him- 
self as complete and as happy as he can, he means 
not that he shall do this at the expense of right 
and truth, or of the happiness and completeness 



The Complete Life. 17 

of others, nor even regardless of these, but by 
means of right and truth ; — if necessary, himself 
suffering personal loss, pain, and injustice, as Mr. 
Spencer has done nearly all his life" (the Union 
admits) for the sake of truth, parity, good- will, 
and progress, and for the advancement of the 
happiness of others. 

We may admit, too, that "of love and service 
to God" — the first of Jesus' two great command- 
ments — " Mr. Spencer nowhere has anything to 
say." Indeed, science as a whole has little to say 
of the formal worship of an abstraction. But of 
love and service to humanity Spencer's works say 
much, and love and humanity are illustrated by 
his life. Opposing, as Mr. Darwin did, — not 
directly, but by the tenor of his philosophy in 
general, — much of the older, erroneous religious 
thought of the world, Mr. Spencer yet gives himself 
practically, as Darwin did, to good deeds. The 
years of patient, untiring attention which Mr. 
Darwin gave to the study of insects, worms, and 
plant-parasites, are often classed by the great 
public as years wasted over trifling things. And 
the world deems that such a man could have 
little care or thought for the great struggling 
mass of humanity. But every grain of new 
knowledge gained by him has helped, and will 
yet help, in the progress of mankind. And in 
matters of direct good cheer and charity, to those 
in need, he was no less earnest than he was over 
his own heart's studies. Few men, of whatsoever 
" creed," have been so faithful as was he, in even 
the trifles of life and its little duties, — "which 
yet, however small in themselves, make so much 
of the comfort and peace of daily experience." 
In a letter from England soon after Mr. Darwin's 
death, Miss Frances E. Willard related of the 
great scientist that he was "the soul of philan- 
thropic work in his own village," and that '''for a 
lifetime he kept the records of its * Friendly 



18 The Complete Life. 

Society.' The hand that wrote the 'Origin of 
Species ' was for many an hour busy noting the 
amounts of coal, sugar and flour sent by that 
organization to the poor people of the place." 
The same, or similar things might be told of 
many others of the leaders of the world's scien- 
tific thought. Their hands and their hearts, 
both, are open. 

And, now, it is unquestionable, I deem, that 
the religion of science is the rational religion of 
our time. It is unquestionable, obversely, that 
the rational religion of our time is necessarily the 
religion of science. 

And science and rational religion, both, are 
crying aloud to men to-day, from a thousand 
quarters, — by precept, by example, by the inspir- 
ing of hope, by urgent calls to come into harmony 
with the true laws of existence ; are crying aloud 
to men to make their lives, in the certain practi- 
cal ways directly pointed out, complete, and 
beautiful and happy — as Spencer hints. Are 
crying to men to let all other things, all less 
things, assume proper place : the mere thirst for 
power, the mere desire for wealth, the mere per- 
sonal longing for ease and self -gratification, the 
mere dwelling in theological subtleties : to let all 
these assume proper place, a subordinate place, 
and to realize in truth that "the chief end of 
man" is none of these things, but something far 
higher. The chief end of man is to make himself 
as complete, — that is, as symmetrical, — in all 
ways, bodily, intellectually, spiritually, as he can, 
and as beautiful, and as happy. 

The world does not see this yet, with any vivid- 
ness ! It is still bound up merely in intellectual 
religious " beliefs," or in simple struggle _ for 
" social position." But it will see it, in time. 
The church doctrines of "God," and of "Immor- 
tality," even, if men are wise, will in time be 
seen by them to be really unessential to the highest 



The Complete Life. 19 

kind of life which it is possible for man to attain. 
And if these be unessential, what time or thought 
must needs be given to the multitudinous less 
doctrines? The mythical "Fall," and the me- 
chanical "Atonement," the Inspiration of Human- 
ity's Scriptures, the nature and being of the great 
World-Prophets — what have any of these things 
to do, in reality, with a practical, helpful, aspir- 
ing human life ! Happy indeed, we may earn- 
estly allow, are those who, in their work and 
hope, and in their striving after the Blessed Best, 
have vision of the essential deity — a belief in the 
steadfastness, and the upward-trending nature, of 
the world-forces ; and confidence in a Future of 
Progress and Attainment. But let not these say 
that others, lacking their vision and their confi- 
dence, have nothing ! Nor let them deem that, 
without either the vision or the confidence, a 
complete, perfect, upright, helpful life may not 
be lived. "The chief end of man is to make 
himself as complete, as beautiful, and as happy, 
as he can." What more is absolutely essential ? 

I. As complete physically. We hear word 
spoken, not seldom, of "the crown of life.'* 
Among the many such crowns which may be 
ours in the human lot, — for they are not one, but 
a thousand, — we may place almost at the head of 
the list the crown of bodily health. Men and 
women more and more largely to-day, in all 
intelligent quarters, are looking at the matter of 
health, of bodily perfection, and giving to the 
subject something of the study and thought and 
care which formerly they gavemerely to the dress 
in which they should strive to hide the body's 
weakness and unshapeliness. But they yet must 
do much more. There is little valid excuse, in 
this age, for chronic illness or deformity. Of 
course I have no reference to the results of acci- 
dents, to the natural weaknesses of old age, nor 
to disease acquired in infected districts, where 



20 The Complete Life. 

duty, or the spirit of helpful discovery, may have 
called the sufferer. But ordinarily, there is little 
valid excuse for illness, and in course of time 
men and women will be ashamed to be ill. 
Especially will men and women, in course of 
time, deem it a disgrace to have their children or 
grandchildren diseased or deformed, or born 
with any erratic mental or moral tendency. By 
nature — or, it were perhaps nearer proper to say, 
by development, by evolution — men and women 
are at the head of the physical creation. The 
human body is the most marvelous organism, the 
most wonderful piece of machinery, known to 
man. It is our duty to care for our bodies, — our 
duty to ourselves, and to those who are to follow 
us; and it is at the same time the only proper 
respect we can show for the developing spirit of 
the universe, out of which we have come. It is 
only through direct and culpable ignorance, or 
wanton sin, on the part of humanity, that disease 
continues to have such large place in the world 
as it still holds. Disease ought to have been 
eradicated from among men before this. It 
might soon be eradicated now. If men during 
the past twenty-five hundred years had given 
themselves to reasonable work of this kind, — the 
annihilation of disease, — towards which devoutly- 
to-be-desired consummation the Buddha and Jesus 
did their part in a natural way centuries ago in the 
inauguration of the work, — if men had given them- 
selves to this, instead of bowing listlessly before 
Buddhistic and Christian idols, and fighting over 
fanciful creeds built on erroneous ideas of " God" 
and of the supposed "teachings" of the men I 
have named, the world which has been groaning 
and travailing in bondage until now would have 
been freed before this from its physical slavery, 
and the children of men would have come up, 
out of Egypt, into a Promised Land worth enter- 
ing. If this world is indeed a "vale of tears," as 



The Complete Life. 21 

so many men and women are fond of claiming, — 
and what shame and disgrace it is for men to 
say, simply in excuse for laziness and apathy, 
that this world is a " Providence-designed 7 ■ valley 
of shadow and woe, "in order that we may not 
get too much attached to it," but give our whole 
time and thought to a hypothetical future! — if 
this world is indeed a "vale of tears," I assert, it 
is so simply and only because man has not the 
faith and energy to make it a breezy, sunlit 
plnteau of peace and health and happiness ! 

How much the so-called "scientific infidels" 
and "atheists" of to-day are doing towards the 
gracious end of changing all this — getting rid of 
the germs of disease, and laying a stilling hand 
upon epidemic and plague! Such "infidels" 
and " atheists " as these, however partisan pulpit 
and theological press may sneer and revile, are 
the men who have built up the world. And they 
are still going on. 

Throughout the universe there are good forces ! 
— forces of Nature; forces which, if men come 
into accord with them, are unfailingly beneficent. 
Every force of Nature, in its normal attitude, is 
beneficent. Could we but fathom all — in their 
full sweep — and understand them, I believe we 
should see this to be true. And in every depart- 
ment of man's being, physical, mental, moral, 
spiritual, there are likewise good forces, — forces 
of Nature ; forces which, if obeyed, are unfail- 
ingly beneficent. There are laws of mental 
growth, laws of spiritual growth ; and there are 
laws which, obeyed by man, preserve, renew and 
invigorate his body, — exciting it to fuller, fresher, 
nobler life, making it to glow and tingle with the 
bounding pulse of health. It remains only for 
these forces to be more fully apprehended, and 
their laws obeyed, — and the world is freed from 
much of its woe. The "Complete Life" will be 
more nearly entered on. 



22 The Complete Life. 

Especially upon the minds of the young, every- 
where, do I wish there might be impressed cer- 
tain words of Prof. Huxley, delivered a few years 
ago before the student-competitors for prizes for 
intellectual and physical proficiency, at University 
College, England. 

"Upon whatever career you may enter," he 
said to them, " intellectual quickness, industry, 
and the power of bearing fatigue, are three great 
advantages. But I want to impress upon you, 
and through you upon others, the conviction 
which I entertain that, as a general rule, the rel- 
ative importance of these three qualifications is 
not rightly estimated, and that there are other 
qualities of no less value. I am much disposed, 
the longer I live, to set the less value upon mere 
cleverness, and to think that the power of endur- 
ance, with persistency, is the most valuable 
quality of all. If any of you were a son of mine, 
and a good fairy were to offer to equip him ac- 
cording to my wishes for the battle of practical 
life, I should say, ' I do not care to trouble you 
for any cleverness ; put in as much industry as 
you can, instead; and oh, if you please, a broad, 
deep chest, and a stomach of whose existence he 
should never know anything.' I should be well 
content with the prospect of a young fellow so 
endowed." 

This matter of health might well engage an 
entire discourse. Far too little attention is paid 
to the subject by those who, from week to week, 
have the divine opportunity of speaking publicly 
to their fellows on matters of gracious import. 
Hopeful, instructive, faithful labor with even one 
or two generations of our families would work 
divine wonders in the health and happiness of 
the race. By and by the pulpit and the platform 
will begin to preach a real " salvation "J 



The Complete Life. 23 

But symmetry of life, now, has not to do with 
the body only. It requires, also, — 

2. Completeness morally. And "completeness 
morally" implies a hard, a continuous battle for 
the upbuilding of a perfect character. The 
"struggle," however, no matter how hard, is 
good. It is the making of men. It is a trite and 
tattered word that the sublimest character comes 
oftenest through the severest experience. The 
attainment of any virtue is worth all the bitter- 
ness and strife it costs. And if the endeavor be 
not only against one's own natural inclinations, 
but against odds which are external, or which 
are hereditary (as is the case with many), so 
much greater the nobility of the struggle ! Tears 
and groans, fightings and conflicts, even to the 
day of one's death, — all these are as nothing, if 
the victory over self be gained at last, or even a 
little progress made. To him that " overcometh " 
it is indeed given to sit upon life's highest 
." throne." 

Again, if ever there is " a time to be ambitious," 
it is not when ambition is easy, but when it is 
hard. "Fight, therefore," comes the command 
to all, — " even in darkness ! Fight when you are 
down ; die hard, — determine, at least, so to do,— 
and you won't die at all." Happy are those who 
see themselves, even slowly, year by year, gain- 
ing ! Let them be encouraged, — encouraged with 
the thought that the real " salvation" is not some- 
thing "instantaneous." Let them be encouraged 
with the thought — and let anxious mothers and 
fathers, fearful for their boys and girls, be encour- 
aged with the knowledge, proven in the world's 
experience — that in human life and the building 
of character "that is not first" which is lofty, 
high, sublime, spiritual, — "but that which is 
natural"; and afterwards, if men guide them- 
selves aright, — afterwards that which is spiritual 
and lofty and divine. 



2U The Complete Life, 

If any, however, have reached middle age, and 
are not getting the lower self under, the higher 
self in the supreme, let them ponder well their 
course. Above all, if there be any who are old, 
and who still go on, slaves to the meanest and 
worst in their being, let them turn hastily their 
thought, and magnify their wills while yet even 
a single month remains in which they may re- 
deem their humanity and prove themselves true 
offspring of the eternal spirit-presence which 
dwelleth in all. They must make haste ! 

Nor, again now, is perfection of body, even 
when accompanied by a high morality, all that 
the symmetrical life implies. There must be, 
furthermore, — 

3. Completeness intellectually. And here, how- 
ever briefly I may speak, I speak with all the 
bounding pulse of an enthusiast ! For, how 
divine a joy it is ! — that joy which never fails to 
come to a man or worn in who so works and 

Elans and hoards the moments day by day that 
e or she is conscious of some new progress 
made, some new soul-growth gained, some new 
attainment acquired in mental a*nd spiritual 
ways, as weeks and months and years hurry all 
onward towards life's fruition ! 

In one of his lectures, — that upon "the most 
brilliant meteor in nature, the rainbow," — Prof. 
Tyndall, ascribing to the French philosopher 
Descartes the honor of having first explained the 
phenomenon in question, uses language like this : 

" There is a certain form of emotion called intel- 
lectual pleasure. It may be caused by poetry, 
literature, nature, or art; but I doubt whether 
there is a pleasure of the intellect more pure and 
concentrated than that of a scientific mm, who, 
looking at a difficulty that has challenged the 
human mind for ages, sees that difficulty melt 
before his eyes, and re-crystallize as a simple 



The Complete Life. 25. 

illustration of a law of nature. Such pleasure 
must have been that of Descartes, when he suc- 
ceeded in uncovering the laws which rule the 
appearance of the rainbow." 

Now, something akin, friends, to the purity 
and " concentration " of a discovery such as this 
of Descartes, even if not wholly equal thereto, is 
every consciousness, on our own individual part, 
of mental and spiritual advances made. How 
much indeed there is that we may learn ! Around 
about us exists an illimitable universe. And 
every flower, every star, every pebble by the way, 
rightly looked into, shall usher us within the 
divine presence — into the secret habitations of 
the infinite and eternal "I AM," — the power 
which was and is and is to be, and whose veil 
hath no man taken away. 

" We live," said Carlyle, " no more of our time 
than we spend well." I know, friends, how full 
of struggle are our lives, how full of work and 
care, how empty of leisure and rest. Yet do I 
believe, at the same time, most thoroughly, with 
him who said, " There is no business, no avoca- 
tion whatever, which will not permit a man who 
has the inclination, to give a little time, every day, 
to study." You who know what joy there indeed 
is, what rest from care and weariness, in the 
helpful thought to be gleaned, even in a snatched 
moment, from the page of science, or of poetry, 
or of romance, or of music, or of art, do not need 
that I should speak this word. But if there are 
any whom these words may reach who read little, 
— who read nothing, perhaps, that is of worth, — 
yet who know that their lives are sordid and nar- 
row and monotonous ; from whom cheerfulness, 
if it ever made its home with them, has long 
since flown; to whom happiness, rapt joy, 
divine blessedness, are but words of air, meaning- 
less and cold and distant ; to such I would say, in 



£6 The Complete Life, 

all earnestness, With a single dollar buy some 
earnest book, whether about the heavens above, 
or about the earth beneath, or about the waters 
under the earth ; seize, then, from your work, 
from your sleep, an hour a day, a half hour, Jive 
minutes, in which to pore over the new-gained 
volume; and, through your brain the livelong 
day, as you sit at your office-desk, as you stand at 
the bench, or the counter, or the kitchen- table, 
as you push the plane or measure the wheat or 
dress the little-ones that clamber over your knees, 
— through your brain the livelong day, and in the 
still watches of the night, there shall course 
visions of beauty and delight before undreamed 
of ; visions of wonder and awe, which shall make 
you, forever thence, a new being. You will come 
to feel, that, after all, whatever its toil and weari- 
ness, life is u worth living"; for you will have 
direct converse with the universe's mighty, inter- 
fused Spirit-Presence ; with the mystic, majestic 
Life which is the All-in-all, — which is above all, 
and through all, and in us all. And certainly, 
with the universe's on-leading divinity, "the all- 
unfolding, the all-upholding,' ' for a Paraclete — 
an eternal u Stand- By" — no life on earth can be 
otherwise than sweet and good, cheerful and 
blessed. The intellectual life is the life of every 
true man's desire. 

And we have not even yet the full thought I 
would have this discourse bear. The chief end 
of man is not only to make himself as " com- 
plete " as he can, in all ways, physically, morally, 
spiritually ; but also, — 

II. As beautiful. Not beautiful, necessarily, 
on the outside, though that is good. And often- 
times, indeed, the outward semblance may be 
changed — may be degraded in beauty, or il- 
lumined — by that which goes on within. 

" For soul is form, and doth the body make." 



The Complete Life. 27 

But, whatever the outside, especially is it the 
chief end of man to make himself beautiful 
within; beautiful in soul. In soul, which is 
more than " intellect. " It is ours to be strong ! 
It is ours, also, to find our own growth in the 
growth of others. It is ours, not to let our own 
selfish woe and griefs, if these throng upon us, — 
nor even our weakness, our poverty, as we say, 
of u high powers," — weigh us down. But rather 
to go forth such helpers as we may in the little 
world close about us ; helpers like those of 
whom Whittier speaks in his lines to the Trailing 
Arbutus : 

U I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made 
Against the bitter east their barricade ; 

And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 

Amid dry moss and dead leaves at my feet, 
The trailing spring flower, tinted like a shell. 

" Low bending o'er it, not irreverent, 

I thought of lives thus lowly clogged and pent, 

Which yet found room, 
Thro' daily cumberings of deep decay and death, 
To give to heaven the sweetness of their breath, 

And to the earth the beauty of their bloom." 

Moreover, as the strongest, sublimest character 
(as we have already said) comes oftenest through 
conflict, through severest struggle, so is it often- 
est of all, perhaps, that out of one's sorrows, 
pains, and disappointments come the highest 
joys and truest soul-beauty. " In old stories of 
celestial visitants," Geo. Macdonald says, "the 
clouds do much ; and it is down the misty slope 
of griefs and pains and tears that the most 
powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and 
women and children." Then let us accept life's 
unavoidable chastenings gladly, patiently ! Note 
many of the sweet-spirited old men and old 



£8 The Complete Life. 

women whom you know. Has their experience 
not been thus, — confirming this word ? Sad if 
the old are fretful and peevish and sullen ! Life's 
truest lessons have indeed been lost by them. 

And yet once more. The chief end of man is 
to make himself as ' ' complete n and as 4 ' beauti- 
ful' ' as he can ; and also, — still lacking, other- 
wise, somewhat of the perfect symmetry, — 

III. As happy. The greatest minds of the 
race have been for the most part joyous minds, 
optimistic minds,— the poets naturally so : Goethe, 
Shelley, Burns, Emerson, Lowell, Wordsworth. 
So of the world's so-called "saviours." The 
Buddha of India, rightly understood, must have 
been, we feel, a man of undoubted cheerfulness, 
ioyfulness, hopefulness, though indeed sobered 
by the fret, the fury, the unsatisfied hunger of 
the world, and serious in the presence of its sin 
and foment. So also, as in part hinted in an 
earlier portion of this discourse, may it be said 
of the man Jesus of Nazareth, that he was of 
cheerful heart. Too often has the hopeful, sunny- 
spirited leader of Galilee been painted only as 
14 a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." 
Jesus must have been naturally joyous-hearted, 
and full always of a sublime hope and earnest- 
ness. Had his really been the gaunt-visaged, 
sorrowful aspect most often pictured, — tell me, 
would the little children have leaped into his 
arms as they did ? Would the lambs have 
frolicked about him as they did ? Would the 
sinner and the needy have opened their secret 
shame, their bitter want, to him ? Would the 
lily of the field, the clinging vine, the flitting 
sparrow, have found expression in his love ? 
Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, 
— these wrote the ascetic ideas of their age into 
Jesus' personality. Corregio, Rubens, Rem- 
brandt, — even Raphael and Dore, — these have per- 
petuated the misinterpretation; have painted a lie. 



The Complete Life. 29 

Both the Buddha of India and the man of 
Galilee must have been noble-featured and cheer- 
ful-hearted. Nay, more than this ; both labored 
and taught, directly and openly, against all 
spiritual depression ; especially against all man- 
ner and kind of stated fasts and formulistic sad- 
ness. 

And the great leaders of the race, in all 
branches of life and thought, have been joyful, — 
why ? Because, for the most part, they have 
come more nearly than have the majority of 
men into a fine harmony with Nature's free good 
forces, both physical and spiritual. There is 
much here that might well engage our thought. 
We should soon see, if we make close observa- 
tion, — it is being pointed out to us time and time 
again, now, in the world's new Vision of Things, 
— that everywhere throughout Nature, under a 
normal reign of things, joy and ease and blessed- 
ness abound. There is no call in Nature to 
despondency, much less to self-mortification. In 
the ordinary course of things, — setting aside all 
direct breakings of law and special accidents, — 
a state of happiness, of cheerfulness, even of 
sprightliness, is the only proper and orderly 
outcome of things everywhere, as the universe 
seems to exist. Looking wide enough and deep 
enough, I believe this will be found to be, 
invariably, the case. The Spirit of Life itself that 
throbs through the world, normally met by man, 
is a spirit of light and sweetness and good ; a 
spirit in perfect sympathy with joy and gladness 
and laughter and song. Flowers bloom, birds 
sing, children laugh and romp, — all the expression 
of the mysterious Unknown. In that beautiful 
little refrain of his, "The God of Glee," Prof. J. 
Stuart Blackie, of Edinboro' University, gives 
admirable expression to something of this thought. 
In his song he sings, — 



SO The Complete Life. 

" Thou art each, and thou art all 

In Creation's living hall. 

Every breathing shape of beauty, 

Every solemn voice of duty, 

Every high and holy mood, 

All that's great and all that's good, — 

All is echo sent from thee, 

God of gladness, God of glee ! " 

And Prof. Blackie is by no means alone, in this 
earnest belief of his in Nature's order and beauty, 
and in her joy-giving attributes. A thousand 
high voices join in with him. 

But Nature, in her dealings with man, requires 
" co-operation." True human happiness comes 
not without "completeness" ; — completeness of 
life, and "soul-beauty." It indeed makes little 
difference where we live, — in city or solitude, in 
palace or cottage. 

" It is not the wall of stone without 

That makes the building small or great ; 
But the soul's light, shining round about, 
And the faith that overcometh doubt, 
And the love that stronger is than hate." 

But goodness is essential — goodness, which 
itself means " co-operation." The highest happi- 
ness comes never without goodness. "Men call 
the proud, the worldly, happy. But they are not. 
The former — the proud — may seem to have more 
than heart can wish ; but there is a gnawing 
worm at the root of their joy. And satisfied 
with life the worldly man cannot be. He eats 
and hungers still ; he drinks, and is yet more 
athirst ; for husks are not food and brine is not 
drink." Again be it uttered, it is only goodness 
that makes true happiness ! Science — all modern 
research— all modern knowledge — points finger 
along the path of implicit obedience ; along the 
path of purity and temperance, of affection and 



The Complete Life. 31 

patience and generosity and sympathy, — along 
the path of truest communion with the eternal 
right which upholds the worlds : points finger 
thus, and says, — " This is the way ! walk ye in it ! " 

"Oh, blind to truth, and life's whole scheme below, 
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe ! 
Who sees and follows life's great scheme the best, 
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest." 

Summing up all, now, we know that the uni- 
verse, nor any of its powers, calls on us for 
sadness ; that it calls on us never for despond- 
ency, nor for self -mortification, nor for any 
denial whatsoever simply for its own sake. We 
know, on the other hand, that it does call on us 
for cheerfulness, and hope, and purity, and 
earnest work, both for ourselves and those around 
us. May it be ours to fulfill our destiny ! — ours 
to fulfill, in every direction, "the chief end of 
man," that so we may enter into The Complete 
Life. Then we need not fear, no matter what 
the "world outside" may think of us, nor what 
they may say of us. Need not fear ! For there 
will be peace within, — the peace that passeth 
knowledge. And the universe is on our side. 

"For him in vain the envious seasons roll, 
Who bears eternal summer in his soul ! " 



The Helper-On. 

I am to speak, in this discourse, of those who 
help on in the world. Incidentally therefore, 
also, of those who hold back. 

It is a splendid thing, amid all the world's war- 
ring opinions in matters of intellect and religion, 
to stand always upon the progressive side. It is 
a trait of forward-looking and nobility. Yes, and 
this is true even if, for the time being, one can 
"do little more" than stand. Morley has said : 
"It is better to be broad and liberal in the wrong 
than not to be broad and liberal at all." High 
words ! And so here. Simply to stand for the 
larger light and nobler hope, however often mis- 
understood, and though against the world, — this 
is well worth any individual man's or any 
religious society's existence, no matter how feeble 
in influence he or it may seem to be, or how op- 
posed to more popular thought. Moreover, such 
shall not always be feeble in influence. Quickly 
or tardily the future, even on earth, shall give 
them due meed of reward ; and in the enlarged 
and ennobled life of Man, if not otherwise, they 
find fit and growing memorial. And, than this, 
no man could ask more. 

"'Tis true, 
The long day of their trifling, men delight 
In tricks of mountebanks, and freely give 
Their pence and shillings to the first light fool 
That dons the cap and bells. But Truth decrees 
Days of a deeper import, when the world, 
Frowning and fearful, will no longer bear 
The feeble resource. Then, O patient seer, 
Man of the shady place and silent power, 

33 



34 The Helper- On. 

Thou shalt have room and audience. Then 

shall weigh 
More heavy in the scale thy lightest tear 
Than the spent laughter of a thousand fools ! " 

Surely it should never trouble the sincere re- 
ligionist of the forward look, whether he be a 
private worker or a public one, that he is misun- 
derstood, and that men pass by on the other side. 
Let him be at peace. Even Channing, a thinker 
in many ways highly conservative, did not al- 
ways have honor from men ; yet Channing dared 
to say, — 

11 Speak always with moral courage ! Speak 
what you account great truths frankly, strongly, 
boldly. Do not spoil them of life to avoid offense. 
Do not seek to propitiate passion and prejudice 
by compromise and concession. Beware of the 
sophistry which reconciles the conscience to the 
suppression, or vague lifeless utterance, of un- 
popular truth. Do not wink at wrong deeds or 
unholy prejudices because sheltered by custom 
or respected names. Having deliberately, con- 
scientiously, sought the truth, abide by your con- 
viction at all hazards. Never shrink from speak- 
ing your mind through dread of reproach. Wait 
not to be backed by numbers. Wait not till you 
are sure of an echo from the crowd. The fewer 
the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct 
and strong must be your own. Courage even on 
the side of error is power. How must it prove 
on the side of truth ! One speaking not from 
selfish calculation, but giving out his mind in 
earnest sincerity, uttering his convictions in 
natural tones, and always faithful to the light 
he has received, however he may give occasional 
offense, will not speak in vain ; he will have an 
ally in the moral sense, in the principle of justice, 
in the reverence for virtue, which is never wholly 
extinguished in the human soul." 



The Helper- On. 35 

Channing's word is a word to all those who 
would be helpers-on. He had seldom sympathy 
with holders-back. 

And to be a helper-on in the world, I would 
now endeavor to manifest, is to be one with the 
eternal progress of the divine power. To be a help- 
er-on is to be, in the only possible way in which 
a man can be such, a " co-worker together " with 
the eternal energy. 

" Onward and on the eternal Pan, 

Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 

Halteth never in one shape, 

But forever doth escape, 

Like wave or flame, into new forms." 

Would we, therefore, truly (in Theology's 
phrase) be "one with" the mighty inhabiting 
Presence immanent in all things, we too must 
eternally follow on. As dying Arthur answered 
from the barge, — 

"The old order changeth, giving place to new ; 

And Truth fulfils itself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

Progress is written everywhere. * ' I have seen," 
says Wordsworth, in the familiar words which 
some of you, at least, know by heart,— 

"I have seen 
A curious child who dwelt upon a tract 
Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, 
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
Listened intently : and his countenance soon 
Brightened with joy; for, murmuring from 

within, 
Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby, 
To his belief, the monitor expressed 
Mysterious union with its native sea." 



36 The Helper- On. 

For the production, however, of similar " sono- 
rous cadences," a common table-cup held lightly 
to the ear will serve almost as well as the poet's 
44 convoluted, smooth-lipped shell. " What, then, 
in reality, is the sound that is heard ? — it cannot 
be the roaring of the sea. No, it is simply the 
circulation of the blood within the ear, echoing 
in the convoluted chambers of the shell, or, less 
distinctly, in the hollow 44 dorue" of the cup. 
4 'Insert the end of the linger in the ear, and a 
roaring is heard like the hum of a great mill. It 
is the noise of the circulation of the blood in the 
finger?' All the smallest organs of our bodies, 
our ears and the points of our fingers even, are 
44 such busy workshops" that they roar like the 
water over the rapids yonder in St. Louis River. 
But at the same time, the roaring, we are told, is 
probably something more than the noise of the 
circulation of the blood. It is the voice of all the 
vital forces of Nature in the human frame to- 
gether — the tearing down and building up pro- 
cesses that are always going forward in the living 
body from the earliest moment until death. The 
entire human body is in perpetual flux. The 
physiologist tells us that during every seven years 
of our life, every particle of our entire bodies is 
changed — dies away, is carried off, being mean- 
while renewed. These bodies of ours, which we 
see and feel and walk about with this morning, 
are not the same bodies at all that we possessed 
seven years ago. 

And so is it with the universe as a whole. 

"The tide rises, the tide falls. 

Darkness settles on roofs and walls ; 

The little waves, with their soft, white hands, 

Efface the footprints in the sands, 

And the tide rises, the tide falls." 

Stars burst out into glory— worlds like ours. 



The Helper- On. 37 

And some' fine, clear night we look upward, and 
across the heavens see a sudden fiery trail. 

" Was it a golden lance 

Into the darkness hurled 
By the Spirit of Air — a new-born star ? . . . 

Or the wreck of a world I" 

What, to our ordinary thought, is nearer to 
immutability than the rock ? "Firm as a rock " 
is our familiar phrase. Yet every granite cliff, 
as well as every stone in the fields and pastures, 
is steadily disintegrating, either fast or slow. 
Once in a while — frequently, in some districts — 
we meet great rocks which a touch will crumble 
into sand. Often, on Cape Ann, on the north- 
eastern Massachusetts coast, — where everything 
is one of three things, rock, or sand, or salt- 
water, — there are acres on acres of elevated 
" common," which some of us have walked over, 
— sandy fields, which once were as solid as the 
rocks now on the shore below, which the sea and 
the atmosphere are eternally tearing down. So 
is it with everything throughout the earth, and 
throughout all worlds. Always change. 

And moreover, now, as it is in physical things, 
so is it in the mental, moral and spiritual worlds. 
This physical universe, of which our own little 
earth is a dust-grain, millions on millions of years 
ago began in chaos. But through constant 
change, and almost constant progression, it has 
attained to its present marvelous order and beau- 
ty. Thus, also, hundreds of thousands of years 
ago, the human mind, developing from something 
less than self- consciousness — no one yet knows 
from how much less — at last attained to self-con- 
sciousness, and began its march upward and 
Truthward — Ideal ward. 

Like physical Nature, it is conjectured, the 
human mind, as I have recounted, began in 
"chaos." But here, suddenly, the comparison 



38 The Helper- On. 

ends, — at the " beginning." For although the ma- 
terial worlds, as it would appear, have many of 
them been brought, during the lapse of ages, into 
comparative ' * completeness, ' ' — notably our own 
earth, — much the larger part of humanity is not 
yet out of the chaotic state— is yet in the rough 
clay. Even in the world's most intelligent quar- 
ters, among the virtue-loving, the aspiring, the 
"religious," — especially at the present time,— -do 
the majority of men's minds, in consideration of 
the great problems of life, of duty and of destiny, 
seem apparently "without form and void," with 
darkness upon the face of the deep. Of those, 
then who still grovel in the slime, who have no 
vision of Natural Law, but dwell, the rather, 
wholly in lawlessness —lias brutal, the sensual, 
the densely ignorant, the madly lustful, — of these, 
what shall be said ? 

In the past history of the universe and of man, 
however, we think we have the prophecy of man's 
future. We look for mankind's "completeness." 
The eternal forces of growth are working in man, 
as they worked in the primeval fire-mist. And 
even though man himself holds himself back, 
still, by the general trend of things he is carried 
forward. He cannot altogether hold back. The 
problem to-day with the real leaders of the race 
is, How man may yet more rapidly be urged 
forward. 

Though it look upon it blindly, humanity in 
these days is making history fast. By rapid 
strides the universe's progressive energy is work- 
ing now. Happy for those in humanity who are 
willing to "co-operate," and glad! who are 
really numbered among the Helpers-on ! 

O that men would not be afraid of the progress- 
ive God-force ! O that men would really "trust 
God ! " Such is the cry, to-day, of many and 
many a one among the real fore-runners of the 
time to be. 



The Helper- On. 39 

Yet while they say this, they mean by " God " 
(it may be not altogether unnecessary for me to 
explain) not the popular misconception of God. 
Nor, indeed, anything perhaps that they can well 

5ut into terms of human thought. They feel the 
lystery too much. Their heart bounds inwardly ; 
song is on their lips ; hope and joy light their 
souls. But they shrink from the expression of 
the inexpressible. They work silently, as does the 
Mystery itself ! Nevertheless, the animating 
Spirit of Nature ; the Unknown Reality back of 
all things ; the developing, upholding Energy of 
the universe ; the Power that circles itself orderly 
in the off-flung ring of nebula and the unswerv- 
ing path of comet ; the Power that blossoms itself 
beautiful in meadow violet and forest fern ; the 
Power that laughs itself gleeful in the ripple of 
brook, in the song of bird, in the dancing of the 
little child's eye ; the Power that surges itself to 
aspiration in the soul of man ; the rower that 
holds the myriad star-worlds in its bosom and 
croons the planet-song that hushes human need 
when in midnight's weariness man looks skyward 
— the leaders of thought say little, I have declared, 
but This is something of what they mean ; This is 
something of what they would say, if they said at 
all ; This is a faint inharmonious echo of the in- 
finite melody in their hearts. Whence shall come 
words that livingly breathe, that divinely pulsate? 
When they are nigh, then at last, perhaps, shall 
something of the Vision Splendid by which we 
are attended first begin really to shape itself in 
speech. 

O that men would not be afraid of the develop- 
ing Over-Soul ; the Source of all things visible 
and invisible ; the Whirler of the universe's glow- 
ing wheels and the Seether of the universe's an- 
cient elements ; the Power infinite and absolute in 
which we live, and move and have our being ; the 
Power which, when co-operated with, carries all 



40 The Helper- On, 

things on and up ! O that men would trust this 
Power, — the real God, — and not be afraid of it, 
nor seek to and feel that they must hide them- 
selves from its glorious light under the shelter of 
old, delapidated, child- world misconceptions of 
the true deity. For in This Power, and in This 
alone, is life, is all possibility, and all hope. 

But with rare exceptions men do not worship 
or trust the true God. By far the large majority 
of men are afraid of ,or ignorant of , the real divin- 
ity — so tenacious in men's minds are old ideas, 
and so fearful seems the human intellect of the 
slightest advance. I dreamed, once, that for a 
thousand years the particles and elements of the 
inanimate world were granted, and used, the 
power of freedom which is exclusively man's, — 
fighting, as he does, against all progress, and 
holding back from every expanding, upward- 
drawing influence which inheres in every throb- 
bing atom of matter as a part of the rhythmic 
Whole. And at the end of the thousand years 
the world was back, millions of years back, in 
some one of the primary geologic periods, Silurian, 
Cambrian, Laurentian ! — back, it may have been 
(for the dream was swept through and through 
by obscuring clouds) beyond the time of the first 
beginnings of f ossil- bearing strata ; back, indeed, 
it might well be, in the nebulous haze which, 
aeons ago, swept in a fiery chaos about the parent 
sun! 

But this was indeed only a dream ! Inherent 
in every atom of matter there is the eternal Force, 
the Divinity, which carries it on and up — trans- 
muting dross into gold, transmuting even the 
diseased membranous secretion of the oyster into 
pearl, transmuting earth and air and water into 
lily and rose and peach and human face — and 
the particles cannot say yea or nay ! It is only 
man — it is only man, who, by his own blindness 
and narrowness and perversity, can hold himself 
back! 



The Helper- On. 41 

But ah, even in man, — in Man, that is, as a 
whole, — there is a progressive Force at work, a 
Divinity, a Deity, to which even man cannot say 
yea or nay. However we may shrink from at- 
tempting to define or explain it, there is indeed, 
and unmistakably, in the nature of things, the 
" Power not ourselves," — a Power to all appear- 
ances infinite and absolute, — which, through the 
ages, however men may disbelieve it and fight 
against it, and however they may neglect to co- 
operate with it, makes for progress and right- 
eousness ! O that men would see that it is man's 
glory to believe in," and welcome, and live in 
accord with this Power,-— working with it, not 
against it. 

I am never weary of pointing to the great 
mental and moral heroes, the spiritual saviours of 
the race, some of whom, in all ages, have glimpsed 
something of the real truth, and in varying gar- 
ment of thought and speech have borne witness 
to the true light. The world has never been with- 
out aid; without the possibility of uplifting. And 
even though the mass of men have indeed almost 
invariably fought against these leaders, — burned 
them, racked them, beheaded them, crucified 
them, — there have always been others ready to 
take their places, risking all that they had risked, 
braving hunger and alienation, and daring the 
same death — for the world's sake ! the unkind 
world's sake — the world which, in all ages, has 
sought to humiliate its real saviours, and to turn 
back, rather than urge onward, the tide of pro- 
gressive truth ! 

Ah, who indeed have been the world's real hold- 
ers-back? Who are the world's realdefamers and 
weaklings to-day ? Of old were they indeed Thales 
and Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Seneca, Galileo, 
Bruno, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Hegel ? — how shall 
I name them all ! Yet all these, and a thousand 
others as superb, have been condemned, have 



■4& The Helper- On. 

been branded, and driven without the pale of 
human love. Have the real holders-back indeed 
been those who have given up home and friends 
and ease and wealth, bearing all evil things for 
their love of truth and progress ? Are they in- 
deed those whom the world has over and over 
called its holders-back — those who have risked all 
and given up all, even life, out of their desire for 
the world's true benefit ? We hear this often said. 
We hear it hinted, in one way or another, every 
week ! 

The rather, however, are not the real enemies 
of Truth and Man those who always have opposed 
advance ; those who have really believed so little 
that they have never dared to cross ' ' new Jor- 
dans," even when some new divine Moses led 
them to the very brink ? — but have always stood 
fixed, immovable, by the one narrow Jordan of 
old time ? Decriers of their fellowmen ! Pious 
upholders of impiety ! God-fearing dethroners 
of the true deity ! 

" Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were 
souls that stood alone, 

While the men they agonized for hurled the con- 
tumelious stone. 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old 
iconoclasts, 

Unconvinced by axe or fagot that all virtue was 
the Past's." 

What opposition all Progress has indeed met, 
in every age ; — and still meets ! 

' Tor all the past of time reveals 
A bridal-dawn of thunder-peals 
Whenever thought has wedded fact." 

Yet of what avail is opposition, when Truth 
once really begins to get a hearing ? There never 
was a time in the world's history when men in 
the mass were thinking harder than they are to- 



The Helper- On. 4$ 

day. Pious opposition has never stayed infidelity 
to what is false. 

For a single example now, as we were not long 
ago reminded, " a generation since, to most New 
England christians, the theological opinions of Vol- 
taire were held to be synonymous with those com- 
monly attributed to the devil ; and no amount of 
argument could have convinced the church that 
it was wrong in this supposition. A later genera- 
tion, however, has discovered that, when com- 
pared with much of more modern thought, Vol- 
taire's religious views may be looked upon as 
highly conservative.' ' 

Opposition to truth is indeed of temporary 
avail only. Though slow in process, final victory 
is always on t the side of the right. The real 
holders-back are in time thrust aside. Who and 
where, to-day, — for a single other modern ex- 
ample, — are the men who scoffed at Emerson, 
who opposed Theodore Parker ? They are all but 
forgotten. Their fame is unknown. While the 
honor of those whom they called destroyers and 
holders-back is every year brightening, and their 
words of hope and prophecy are stars in the 
night. 

The real holders-back ? Are they indeed men 
like Jesus ? Yet how he was denounced by the 
pious Scribes and Pharisees, and driven to his 
death. The cross for him ! Are they indeed men 
like Socrates ? — poison-hemlock for him ! Men 
like Newton and Galileo and Laplace ? men like 
Channing and Parker and Emerson and Matthew 
Arnold ? men who are trying to lift the world 
upward and lead it onward ? Or are they not, in 
reality, the men who are afraid of the Truth ; who 
denounce progress ; the men who would keep the 
world in ignorance ; the men who hold to old 
thought ; the men who preach old doctrine ; the 
men who hold to " worn-out dogmas" because 
they still are the most popular, or perhaps simply 



U The Helper- On, 

because Paul, or Peter, or St. Augustine, or Cal- 
vin, held to them? 

I would not be misunderstood, friends. Are my 
words sounding harsh ? Such is not intentional. 
I am not saying, by any means, that " all virtue" 
is in leaving the old ; that virtue and acceptance 
of the new are synonymous ; that outside of con- 
tinuous advance there is no virtue. I know, as 
well as any can, — J was nurtured in it all, — that 
there is much of good, much of help, much of 
rest, in the old faiths — though too often the " rest " 
is of inertia. And I know, too, that there is much 
of " progress," so-called, that is mere bravado; 
that is mere truckling ; that is bald, blank, ignor- 
ant denial, without a thought of, or a desire for, 
anything that is better, and truer, and purer, and 
more helpful. Mere bluster, unwilling weakness, 
like this, we cannot disallow or denounce in terms 
too severe. He who truly foregoes the old and the 
false also earnestly searches for and is a devoted 
follower of the newer and truer. 

Moreover, although I indeed believe in works ; 
in morality; although I believe in " salvation 
through works ' ' ; although I believe that the only 
salvation worth the name, for individual men or 
for the world, is through morality, through indi- 
vidual endeavor; — for " salvation," with me, 
means the perfection of the man, in every possible 
direction, physical, mental, moral, spiritual, and 
here is no child's play, nor a task calling simply 
for some supernatural religious "formula"; — 
yet do I believe also in faith ! in trust ! Indeed, 
without my faith — as bars of steel for strength, 
as cords of love for courage — I certainly never 
could work, or speak, another day. But of faith 
I have unfailing store, I trust the universe. I 
believe in the stability of things. I feel that no 
high endeavor is, or, in the nature of things, can 
be, in vain. I believe in the continuity of law, 
and of good. And nothing, I deem, can shake 



The Helper- On, 45 

this my faith, for I consider it founded on verifi- 
able foundation. 

On verifiable foundation. It is not, then, a 
blind faith. And yet it is still " faith," for it is 
not complete knowledge. To-morrow the sun 
may not rise ; to-morrow fire may not burn ; to- 
morrow sin may not scar ; to-morrow love and 
aspiration and helpfulness may not upbuild and 
consecrate. But I do not believe any such " To- 
morrow of Death ' ' as this will ever come. I have 
" faith " that it will not, — for back of me is all the 
record of Nature's past, unchanged, immutable, 
since time began. Yet a change may come ; Na- 
ture may not be steadfast. All the facts may not 
yet be in. So my faith is still " faith." It is not 
complete knowledge. But it is helpful, and peace- 
giving, and arm and heart strengthening, and I 
go on undismayed. 

" Of what worth, however," — this I know will 
be in the hearts, if not on the lips, of many who 
hear or read these words; "of what worth is 
such faith as this if not backed by a 'God'!" 
" Can I tell what ' God ' is ? " No, no more than 
can the theological " powers that be," who persist- 
ently, every now and then, ask us if we " believe " 
in God ; the men who would praise us, and grant 
us religious fellowship, in exact accordance with 
the degree of ignorance with which we might 
answer. No one of any wisdom "defines God" 
to-day. " To define is always to confine." 

But I believe in the Power which is the Life of 
the universe. I trust that Power. I believe in 
and trust the unknown yet eternal Energy that 
pulsates through the world ; the unknown Spirit 
of divine Might that throbs through us and 
through all the world. And I believe that this 
Power, this Spirit, this Energy, — call it what you 
will, — accepted, assisted, worked together with 
by man, will bring all things out right — in the 
end. What that end will be, I must say again, 



46 The Helper- On. 

I do not profess to know, in entirety, or even in 
little. Who does or can ? But here again I hope 
and trust, — and am willing to wait. This is all I 
can do. 

And meantime, friends, I try, and call also 
upon you— to be faithful ; faithful to the newest 
and truest and best light that men can gather 
together into the lamp of human knowledge 
and reflect forth for the guidance and up- 
lifting of the world. I try, and I call upon you, 
to renounce all that is old and hurtful — all that 
holds man back from personal, individual en- 
deavor. I try, and I call upon you, to renounce all 
evil habits, — all ways of life that injure the body 
or degrade the soul. I try, and I call upon you, 
to give over all unkindness and uncharitableness, 
all pettiness of spirit, all harshness, and all habit 
of domineering tyranny. I try, and I call upon 
you, to be pure in heart and pure in life. I try, 
and I call upon you, to strive for the upbuilding 
both of yourselves and of all men around about, 
in mental and ethical and social ways ; to strive 
for a larger presence of justice in the world, a 
truer bond of peace. And whatever people may 
say or think, — however people, dear friends even, 
mother or brother or wife or husband, may be 
" hurt" in mind or heart, — I try, and I call upon 
you, to be faithful to the world's expanding 
thought For this is the only possible means 
through which man as a whole can ever come to 
his best. 

Said John Stuart Mill years ago, in his auto- 
biography, "The time has come in which it is the 
duty of all qualified persons to speak their minds 
about popular religious beliefs." One of the lead- 
ers among the so-called ' ' evangelical " churches 
said not long since to an assembly of his 
brother-ministers, "When you have to give up 
what your mother taught you, do it, honestly, — 
but do not say much about it publicly" The day 



The Helper- On. 47 

of "suppression," however, has gone by. John 
Stuart Mill, whom I just quoted, did not believe 
in the method of " suppression." Channing, as 
we saw in the beginning, did not believe in " sup- 
pression." Nor did Jesus, the prophet-hero of 
Galilee. Renouncing all the tattered temple up- 
holstery and soul-less technicalities of the Jewish 
faith, " A new commandment," said Jesus, " give 
I unto you." And others and others since have 
shown newer commandments still. 

Especially perhaps since Mill's time have a 
growing multitude been speaking, — among them 
Mr. Leslie Stephen, who, in his "Apology for 
Plain Speaking," cautions thus : 

"Destroy credit, and you ruin commerce; 
destroy all faith in religious honesty, and you ruin 
something of infinitely more importance than 
commerce. Who can see without impatience the 
fearful waste of good purpose and noble aspira- 
tion, caused by our reticence at a time when it is 
of primary importance to turn to account all the 
forces which make for the elevation of mankind ? 
If we had always waited to clear away shams till 
we were certain that our action would produce 
absolutely unmixed benefits, we should still be 
worshiping Mumbo- Jumbo." 

And so others, without number, had I not 
quoted enough. 

But now, above all technicalities, friends ; 
above all bickerings and disputes, let me, as I 
conclude, point once more, and with voice of 
emphasis, to those two things at which 1 have 
already hinted, upon which all, or almost all, are 
agreed — conduct, and the spirit of human help- 
fulness. Conduct, which, as Matthew Arnold has 
well said, is "three-fourths of life " ; and the spirit 
of helpfulness, — the enthusiasm of humanity, — 
without which all men can never be uplifted. 



48 The Helper- On. 

And co-worker, once more, with these two, 
guider and controller of these two — let me repeat 
it ! — is faith. Not blind faith, not foundationless 
faith, nor faith in follies. But faith in the stead- 
fastness of the universe ; faith in the universe's 
unchanging beneficent forces, obedience to which 
is life ; faith in the general Heart of Good ! To 
which faith, counting by the past, and dreaming 
that what always has been will always continue 
to be, we have, I deem, a legitimate right. 

In order to accomplish anything good and true, 
we must " believe"; — must at least believe that 
there is sanity in our doing ; that some good shall 
help us in the doing ; that, some good shall result 
from our doing. 

So, then, believe ! Believe ! — never less, but 
more. We of the liberal thought are not working 
to do away with belief. A harder task by far, 
than that, is ours. We are endeavoring to clarify 
belief. And moreover, friends, work also ! Work 
as well as believe. Give of your thought, your 
study, your leisure, your means, your soul, — it is 
activity that " saves.' 7 Work, together with all 
the universe's powers of good, to lift yourselves 
up, and to lift mankind up ; to make men and 
women high, broad, temperate, helpful men and 
women, — men and women who shall find God in 
Nature and in Humanity, and who, in their love 
for and service of both these latter, shall really, 
for the first time, begin to "worship." Then you 
cannot fail of Helping-On. You will not be of 
those who hold back. 



Moral Purpose. 

A number of years ago, in a little Massachu- 
setts town, after a season of drought and dust, 
there sprang up, all unannounced, in the lawn 
fronting a certain quiet residence, a young, 
thrifty shoot. Following its appearance came a 
break in the Summer's dryness. Showers and 
sunshine alternated frequently, so that the sprout 
grew rapidly. And gradually it developed into 
a handsome tree, with striking and beautiful 
foliage, aflame with buds and blossoms of unusual 
delicacy and fragrance. The fruit is a berry of 
bright scarlet and green. The tree passes through 
Winter unscathed, and needs no touch of arti- 
ficial aid. And what is singular about it all is, 
that the tree seems to be a stranger in a strange 
land. No one who has seen it knows how it 
came there, nor what it is. Was the seed from 
which it grew shaken from the wing of a bird, on 
its way from some other clime ? Did it fall from 
amid the plumage of the berry-eating wild-goose, 
in some semi-annual migration of that bird from 
north or south ? Who shall say ? But, dropped 
from the sky or not, and whatever its native 
home, its beauty, I have read, is indescribable. 
It is a treasure to its owner, a delight to all who 
visit it. It is a gem in the creation ; a ceaseless 
wonder. 

I am to speak, in this discourse, of Moral Pur- 
pose. Whence came, think you, into the human 
soul, that bud of promise ? And when came it, 
first ? 

49 



50 Moral Purpose, 

Moral Purpose ! It is that which gives mean- 
ing and depth to life! It is that alone which 
gives sane thought to the mystery of the universe. 
It is that which is the modern "tree whose fruit 
is for the healing of the nations." Where and 
when indeed, in human history, did it first 
spring up ? 

Dry and dusty it was, I have said, over Massa- 
chusetts lawns, when the unknown flower-beauty 
of which I have told sprang to be. What of the 
far times in human experience, before Moral 
Purpose in the universe was dreamed of as 
present in the heaven-spaces, and known actu- 
ally, on earth, among men ! Drear and desert- 
like, even to-day, oftentimes, notwithstanding 
our highest vision, — arid and unprofitable often, 
even for the noblest souls of the race, — seems 
the human lot, when trials and disappointments 
press hard ; when bereavement is nigh ; when 
injustice holds harsh sway, when poverty is 
present, or material loss comes suddenly ; when 
physical pain racks the body ; when friends prove 
false ; when pleasure has failed ; when ambition 
has a moment or two flared in promised flame — 
and then sunk to ashes ! The hearts of the 
noblest men and women on earth are, even now, 
at times, kept from fainting, and their souls from 
death, only through their strong, even impas- 
sioned holding to the belief in some high if indeed 
faintly manifested Moral Purpose in the unfath- 
omed Scheme of Things, back of all apparent 
earthly shifts and shocks. And if this to-day, 
and among the pure and true, what then must 
have been the fact far back in remote earthly 
ages; back in the aeons when "dragons of the 
prime," tearing each other "in their slime," and 
"red in tooth and claw," had but a short time 
given way to the coming of a being manifesting 
an approach towards manhood? or even many 
centuries and hundreds of centuries later, when 



Moral Purpose. 51 

man really began to be a sensitively conscious 
soul, and self-conscious ? How terribly unmean- 
ing, arid, full of pain and fear and doubt, must 
life then have been ! — if any there were, then on 
earth, of eager, thoughtful, questioning soul. 

And must there not have been thoughtful, 
earnest, anxious men and women then? — 
mothers, laying softly down their dead boys or 
girls amid forest-branches, or by the river-side, 
and turning to look back and wonder what the 
stillness meant ? men, dying of hunger and 
thirst, and turning weary eyes to the pitiless sky 
— unconscious even of the thought "Law"? 
What could life be but black and barren ? 

And even to-day again, to those still without 
any slightest gleam of a supreme overruling Pur- 
pose immanent in all things, permeating alike 
suns and souls — permeating comet-flash in the 
far heaven-spaces, and, no whit less, ghastly 
famine in woody hut of half -human savage ; per- 
meating nebulous trails high yonder in ether, 
and, iust as certainly, the lightning-flashes and 
thunder-rumblings in the lowering air much 
nearer at hand ; the earthquakings and hot-lava 
spoutings beneath men's feet, no less or more 
than the whirr of the cricket or the wail of a 
child ; — with no faintest realizing consciousness 
of a power so mighty and so morally just that it 
" doth preserve the stars from wrong," and yet, 
at the same time, if recognized, is so universal 
that M it singeth low in every heart " ! — how 
desert-like and woeful such as these, even to-day, 
must find life — the willfully dissolute, the will- 
lessly drunken, the crowded in foul city tene- 
ments, the miserly, the lustful — and their name is 
legion ! — the men who cannot see ! 

x et, far back, — hundreds of thousands of years 
back, — at some dim point in human history, the 
first gleam of a resplendent moral purpose, over- 
arching all, and calling on man for co-operation, 



52 Moral Purpose. 

did flash, clear and growing, into earthly heart 
and soul, — the heart and soul of some first, 
poetic, spiritual-minded child of Nature, — though 
exactly when we know not. Suffice it that 
it came ! — and the first man stood Hope- 
conquered, with his face Idealward turned. 
And then indeed began progress — forward-look- 
ing — high endeavor ! 

And do we repeat our other question, — Whence ? 
— now that we have tried to answer the When ? 
(tried, and failed !) Well, we do not need to stop 
long here, — though not in entirety, indeed, do 
we know ; not fully; not transcendently. But, 
surely, from that unity it came, — that mighty 
unity, — the all-mystery, — which in its very unity 
and mightiness bears all things in its bosom, even 
as it includes all ! — which gave birth to all, in 
which all live, towards which all tend ; — the 
supreme ; the ever-onworking ; — unto which " the 
weary weight of all this unintelligible world," 
we can but believe, is shot through and through, 
somehow, with light — as, sometime, we may see it : 
light which is, literally, now, " insufferable.' ' 

Is there indeed room — sane room — for any 
other hypothesis ? Nay, there must be, in the 
universe, Moral Purpose. And the seed of that 
Moral Purpose, unquestionably, in order that 
men might have it, existed potential in the Nature 
of Things. It has " overbrooded " man from the 
first. And when, finally, after many groanings 
and stumblings, man stood at last a conscious 
worshiper of the Ideal, then might Nature well 
have burst forth into that Voice as from the 
clouds, — seeing what manner of man-child she, 
after many strivings, had finally gotten unto her- 
self through elemental seethings, — " This is my 
beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." For 
at last man had entered on his birthright. He was 
a conscious co-worker with Good. 



Moral Purpose. 53 

Say, if you will, and as some do, that "man 
* discovered ' morality " ; that morality never was 
u revealed," except as the growing necessities of 
humanity's highest life brought, with them, in 
the very fact that they were necessities, the 
suggestions of the true way of harmony. Grant 
all this, I say, and there yet remains the truth 
that bach of those "necessities," and back of that 
"required harmony," was the somewhat which 
compelled those necessities and that harmony. 
And thus once more, — only, one step farther on, 
— we are again in the presence of " the great first 
cause, least understood," from which all sprang, 
to which all tend, "path, motive, guide, original, 
and end." Discovery is, itself, " revelation," — 
and the only revelation. 

And moreover, now, like the coming of the 
exquisite and fragrant tree-blooms to the faded 
Massachusetts lawn, — unheralded, unfathomed, 
yet beautiful and sweet, and a saving delight to 
all who behold, — so the coming, into the soul of 
man, of the sight of Moral Purpose as the end 
and aim of being, whether in streaming sun or 
upyearning soul, has been the blossom above all 
other blossoms of earthly existence which has 
given man faith and courage. He now has 
strength to go on. 

And sure, as he deems, of this much, he may 
certainly, so again he deems, be sure of more. So 
that "to live," now, is synonymous with strife 
for growth, for progress. " To live " is no more, 
in this age, simply "to exist." Really to live 
means to expand, to grow in beauty of soul and 
mind and body ; to battle, in every way possible, 
for truth and good, and for higher justice in the 
world ; to strive to bring all things, and all souls, 
into truer communion with the Nature of Things. 
"To live," that is to say, is synonymous, now, 
with deeds of daring rectitude, with pulses stirred 
to generosity, with scorn of miserable aims that 



54 Moral Purpose. 

end with self ; is synonymous with thoughts 
sublime that pierce the night like stars, and by 
their mild persistence urge man's search to vaster 
issues. Nothing less than this satisfies. 

And with the idea of " unity" in mind, — the 
idea of u oneness" everywhere, — we can but 
believe the whole universe to be somehow per- 
meated thus, with this meaningful, increasing 
"life," — life which is life — "Life of Ages, richly 
poured " ; — and that the final outcome of things 
shall prove all well. 

See f now, for a moment or two, how, out 
of all the chaos of the past, — the waste and 
lumber of being's shore, — Moral Purpose in 
human life, whatever its far, weak origin, has 

gradually so grown, and become beautified, as to 
ominate, to-day, the entirety of earnest modern 
life. From beginnings in meanness, it is blossom- 
ing now to -perfect flower. And how could this 
be better manifested to us than in the single 
illustration of the springs and purpose of modern 
literature ? For, as Charles Dudley Warner two 
or three years ago hinted, the life of any people, 
and its literature, are intimately related. And the 
voice of the better and nobler world to-day is 
indeed as one voice, echoing Warner's words, — 
Men cannot be happy unless they are good, and 
they cannot be good unless the care of the soul 
(the high part of man), — the upbuilding, that is to 
say, of character, — occupies the first place in their 
thoughts. That is the first interest of man. The 
interest of the body is mid- way ; and last of all, and 
least of all, when rightly regarded, is the interest 
about " place" in the world, and about " money." 
Many refuse this order of interests, true ; and 
many set "literature" altogether to one side, as 
of small or no practical account in human life. 
Yet is there, to-day, a growing minority (if still a 
minority) on the side of all high soul-helps, on the 
side of all high aids to individuality, to personal 



Moral Purpose. 55 

strength; — of which aids, literature, probably, 
now, has become chief. And by and by, — slowly, 
— far off, — the minority will become a majority. 

Using the illustration, and in large part the 
words, of a writer in the Boston Herald, — 
Nothing is so free as letters. It is always 
the unchecked expression of the individual senti- 
ment ; and it is also the correct photograph 
of national feeling. The scholar unhesitatingly 
looks to literature for the true effect of the 
French Revolution, not less than for the con- 
dition of Athens in the age of Pericles. And 
exactly thus we say of literature to-day that 
its predominant characteristic is Moral Purpose. 
Or, at any rate, purpose. In part it may be nation- 
al or individual purpose, but, largely, it is ethical. 
Its tendency is to take up the obstinate question- 
ings which relate to the origin of life, the being 
of God, the root-ideas of duty, the sphere of con- 
science, the evils of society. It has also to do, 
actively, with matters of reform, with matters of 
development, — the regeneration of society, the 
amelioration of life. The books of the day are 
full of suggestions for the improvement of social 
and personal conditions. The serious writing in 
the great reviews is of this sort. There has never 
been a time when so many persons were writing 
essays for the purpose of influencing both opinion 
and action. A hundred and fifty years ago, when 
Addison was initiating the modern newspaper in 
England and shaping the social morals of his day, 
it seemed a great thing to have an object in view. 
But to-day Addison's work seems light and flip- 
pant beside the essays in the Forum or the North 
American Review, or the social discussions in the 
leading daily press. Look at it in the case of 
individual writers : There is nothing to relieve 
the prevailing seriousness in Matthew Arnold's 
writings but his exquisite raillery. Dr. Holmes 
has plenty of wit on the surface, but he is always 



56 Moral Purpose. 

striking at moral issues. Emerson separated him- 
self from social life chiefly that he might turn his 
thoughts to social problems with greater devotion. 
Carlyle was a tremendous moralist. George Eliot 
could never withdraw her mind from the great 
questions of personal duty and present existence. 
Her imagination gravitated to these issues, be- 
cause they had her large and constant thought. 
And so of others. Many authors of lighter vein 
may " please " us for a moment ; they may lift us 
up from care, by a burst of realistic joy or woe as 
pictured in other souls ; but in literature not to 
avow an ultimate aim, and a moral aim, seems to- 
day to be looked upon as a positive discredit. 

For it is the bettering of the world ! It is the 
improvement of mankind ! It is the lessening of 
sorrow ! It is the giving of hope, and of trust in 
the universe ! These are what men to-day are 
seeking ! 

And there is good to come out of all this. Some- 
thing great, and noble, and permanent, shall be 
its outcome — nay, is already its outcome. The 
world is beginning to swing into line with its 
glorious army of Brownings and Arnolds and 
Eliots, who heretofore have been almost as leaders 
without an army to follow them. The followers 
now are mustering. 

And the question, the great question, to-day, 
for every man and woman, is, Am I to be of them ? 
For every man may know that if he — even he — is 
faithful, the victory of the good shall come the 
sooner ; that thus the Moral Purpose of the 
universe shall the quicklier be demonstrated to 
all laggards and slow. It is the time for every 
man to take his stand. Religion of the old kind 
— the ecstatic, the somnolent, the rapt, the merely 
contemplative or laudatory — has been tried, and 
has largely failed. Religion of the new kind — the 
active, the ethical, the upright — the religion which 
is the teacher and promoter of Truth, Righteous- 



Moral Purpose. 57 

ness and Love in the world — this waits for every 
man, and for every man's self-sacrifice, for every 
man and every man's faithfulness, in body, in 
mind and in morals, to put it into forceful opera- 
tion among men. As the means of doing away 
with all the great sins, the " Babylonian woes," 
of modern society, our hope and our only hope, 
in the new view of things, is the practical applica- 
tion, in the hearts and minds and lives of the 
masses, high and low, rich and poor, intellectual 
and ignorant, of modern ethics and the spirit of 
co-operation, — co-operation man with man, and 
the intelligent co-operation of all with the hidden 
yet ever-manifest Moral Purpose in the nature of 
things. No longer must the world wait idly for 
some far-off redemption, which, without human 
effort, shall establish "thousand years of peace. " 
The progressive universe-energy, forever on- 
working, redeems humanity through man. Oper- 
ating in Sirius, in Aldebaran, the universe-energy 
works there in ways unknown to us it may be, — 
but, we may be sure, never by miracle other than 
the eternal miracle. And the same eternal mir- 
acle is around about, and over, and in us, here, 
on this little, divine, complex, soul-producing, 
love-producing mystery of an earth, as much as 
in any farthest heaven-spaces. And we have all 
the help and all the miracle we need. If all the 
men and women in the world to-day who can 
and might, only would, act, the great regenera- 
tion would come ! 
The Moral Purpose in Words worth says to us, — 

"The law by which mankind now suffers is most 

just. 
For by superior energies, more strict 
Affiance in each other, faith more firm 
In their unhallowed principles, the Bad 
Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak, 
The vacillating, inconsistent Good." 



58 Moral Purpose. 

" They who engage in the service of evil give to it 
all their energies. ISTo wonder it has thrived in the 
world." But good is mightier in the end, and 
good shall sometime prevail — if we help ! The 
Moral Purpose of the universe dwells in highest 
men ! in Man ! 

" Therefore not unconsoled we wait, — in hope 

To see the moment when the righteous cause 

Shall gain defenders zealous and devout 

As they who have opposed her ; in which Virtue 

Will to her efforts tolerate no bounds 

That are not lofty as her rights ; aspiring 

By impulse of her own ethereal zeal. 

And when that sacred spirit shall appear, 

Then shall our victory be complete as theirs." 

Every noble work is at first impossible. This 
truth must we bear in mind when to us the years 
seem to move slow. In this age we may be 
assured for a truth, — reading Nature's past, and 
learning patience from the fact, — that the Moral 
Aim of the Cosmos swings forward only by 
revolutions of thousands of years, not by ticks of 
the little clock upon our wall. Happy you, happy 
I, if even by one " tick " in our life-time we urge 
the Cosmos on ! The world may be transfigured. 
We may help in the transfiguration. 

"A youthful painter found one day 
In the streets of Rome a child at play ; 
And moved by the beauty that it bore, 
The heavenly look its features wore, 
On a canvas radiant and grand 
He painted its face with a master hand. 

" Year after year on his wall it hung ; 
'T was ever joyful and always young, 
Driving away all thought of gloom 
As the painter toiled in his lonely room. 



Moral Purpose. 59 

" But the painter's locks grew thin and gray ; 
His young ambition had passed away ; 
He looked for years, in many a place, 
To find a contrast to that sweet face. 
Through haunts of vice in the night he strayed 
To find some ruin that crime had made : 
And at last, in a prison-cell, he caught 
A glimpse of the hideous face he sought. 
On a canvas, weird and wild, but grand, 
He painted the features with master hand. 

" That loathsome wretch in the dungeon low, 
With the face of a fiend and the look of woe, 
Ruined by revels and stained by sin, 
A pitiful wreck of what once he had been, 
Hated, and shunned, and without a home — 
Was the child that played in the streets of Rome !" 

Pitiful poem ! we say. Yet every equally loath- 
some wretch that treads Chicago streets to-day, 
or slinks down yonder Lake Avenue south, was 
once a laughing, innocent babe, with infinite 
possibilities in him. And the instilling, into his 
young soul, in the right way, of Moral Purpose, — 
the binding of him, with links of love, to the pure 
heart of the pure, to the strong heart of the 
strong, to the Moral Core of Things, would have 
been growth and blessing to him forever. But 
somebody, who knew better, or who ought to 
have known better, simply failed in duty ! Society 
failed in duty ! And in a hundred ways we fail ; 
in a hundred ways society fails. 

Who shall spur us up ! What shall spur us up ! 
Around about us, always, is blessing : and we 
let it pass us, and let it pass the world, by ! The 
good forces of the world-energy are never absent 
fromus. Beckoning voices ceaselessly call. Yet 
man's hight of attainment and hight of happiness 
depend altogether on the use he makes of the 
faculties which are his ; on the use he makes of 



60 Moral Purpose. 

the blessings and means of progress which are 
his. And so it will always be. Blessing, not 
cursing, is offered us. But blessing is not forced 
upon us. Lack of earnestness in inquiry con- 
cerning the physical, moral, mental, spiritual 
powers of the universe, debars us from a helpful 
knowledge of the true order and beauty of the 
world, into complete harmony with which order 
and beauty we should come, bringing others 
with us. 

Moreover, every guilty deed shuts us out from 
spiritual blessing and progress. The divine on- 
working spirit of things will not, never does, 
never can, forsake us. But (so to speak) we may 
flee from the great Good, and from the healthful 
results of "harmony." Nature grants us light : 
we have our choice whether we will walk in the 
darkness, or in the light which she gives. Here 
is the blessing of the sun : but we may shut our- 
selves in a dark room, or put out our eyes. Here 
are the laws of health, which we may follow — or 
disobey ; the laws of our moral nature, of up- 
rightness, of justice, of personal purity, all of 
which we may abuse, or neglect. Here is our 
sense of the beautiful, through which our souls 
may be educated, enlarged, made glorious, made 
to rejoice in the light and manifest beauty of the 
world. We may see beauty, we may find helpful- 
ness and uplifting, in every rising sun, in the red 
of every western sky, in the tree and the flower 
and the ocean. Said Tennyson, of his dead 
Arthur, — 

"His voice is on the rolling air, 
I hear him where the waters run, 
He standeth in the rising sun, 

And in the setting he is fair." 

So may we say of the world-spirit. And there 
are other manifestations of the divine, besides 
Nature's beauty — manifestations multitudinous 
in number : the history of Nature's past in rock 



Moral Purpose. 61 

and glacier ; the formation of the tiniest forest 
flower ; the face of a little child ; the love of 
mother, of friends, of families ; — indeed a multi- 
tude of things : all of which, discovered and 
rightly used, may add to our joy and our growth ; 
all of which we may accept and use as a part of 
the Moral Order and Purpose of the universe. 
But even all of these we may, on the other hand, 
willfully neglect, and, in so far, separate our- 
selves from the divine. 

Our Ideal, moreover, — that high formation in 
every man from out of the inherent Moral Pur- 
pose of the universe resident in Humanity, — is all 
that is bright and pure and holy and wise and 
desirable. When we, by our own willfulness, by 
our own carelessness, by our own contented 
ignorance, fall short of the brightness of our 
Ideal, strive not for its holiness and wisdom, we 
so far, again, separate ourselves from Good. For 
this is the nature of the universe, — discover and 
use, or forfeit. Good is ever near. Nature's 
order and beauty, — the transcendent seed let fall 
into the heart of man in primal ages from the 
universe's natural, developing, overbrooding, 
inter brooding Spirit-Energy, — these beckon us 
ever toward perfection. The eternal order will 
not — can not, I say again — cast us out from itself. 
But shall the universe's Moral Purpose work for 
ever on, so far as the large part of mankind is 
concerned, unregarded ? 

And what about men's actual transgressions ! 
Ah, would that every man might bear the full 
consequences of his own sin — and only of his 
own ! But this is not the way of the universe. 
The consequences of sin are never absent ; but, 
far too often, they fall upon guiltless souls. Pity, 
O spirit of remorseless Law, for those who, 
through our misdeeds, are made innocently to 
suffer ! for those — our children, our friends, hu- 
manity — upon whom our shortcomings and sins 
bring sorrow and pain and loss ! 



62 Moral Purpose. 

And what of the "highest "in ourselves — that 
which religion calls the "soul"? Here, again, 
"law "is no less steadfast. Every guilty deed 
bears, in itself, its own retribution, — of pain, of 
remorse, of the likeness of death. And not in the 
possible future only, but now and here — if we 
have within us such natures as permit true man- 
hood. We are not what we might have been. For 
that is what Moral Order means ! In its service 
is joy and growth ; in disobedience to it is wreck 
and loss. In carelessness of it is woe ; in regard 
for it is fragrance and beauty like to the fragrance 
and beauty of the unheralded blossoms in a far- 
off State, with the story of which this discourse 
opened, — the blossoms coming no one knows 
whither, but full of grace and help, even in time 
of aridness and drought. 

What, then, remains ? 

Bloom on, O flower, afar in Massachusetts 
green ! Bloom on, and brighten, still, little 
children's eyes ! give to youth and maiden hap- 
pier ideal and converse ! and to age, the blessed 
hope that the drought and dust of earth entire 
shall sometime end in the fresh rains and verdure 
of a ceaseless Springtime, of a land where it is 
always early morning, where blossoms of per- 
ennial glow and fragrance spring ever upon the 
Tree of Life. 

And thou, too, bloom on, O bud of Moral Pur- 
pose in the soul of man ! From out of the unseen 
thou, also, earnest, and we know not, for surety, 
whence thou art. Yet know we that thou art of 
good ! It is thou that dost bind us to the one, the 
eternal ! In thee is the world's progressive Won- 
der and Nature of Things revealed ! Our struggle 
for thee is a struggle towards the heart and soul 
of the universe ; our grasping of thee is a grasp- 
ing of the garment of the World-Mystery, — is a 
touch of the hand that alone shall lead us into 
peace. 



The Deification of Man. 

For two thousand years there have been theo- 
ries formulated by philosophers in the endeavor 
to explain the origin, among the Greeks and 
Romans, of the idea of the Gods. Probably the 
most generally accepted theory, to-day, is that 
which makes the marvelous myths of antiquity 
conceruing deities to be the storied personifica- 
tions, on the part of the ancients, of the visible, 
natural phenomena of the world into which they 
were born. Apollo every day drove his chariot, 
the sun, across the heavens. Beneath Mount iEtna 
was the forge of Vulcan, spouting forth continu- 
ally its flame and sparks. Neptune ever tossed 
his arms about wildly — the waves of the sea. 
And iEolus, the wind, dashed vessels in pieces, 
or bore them swiftly on their way. 

To-day, we know that there is nothing super- 
natural. But neither in ancient times was any- 
thing conceived as being supernatural. The 
idea of the supernatural came in later. In the 
far times of which I speak, however, the lack of 
consciousness of the supernatural, amid all their 
fanciful, often wild ideas, was not in disbelief, 
through knowledge, as ours is ; but in simple 
ignorance. For at that time it was not known 
that there was any such thing as Nature — the 
orderly, unintermittent ongoing of the universe's 
forces. All life and action, in early ages, wher- 
ever present, was looked upon as arbitrary. All 
was marvelous, mysterious, utterly uncompre- 
hended. Every incident and event of the out- 
ward world — the rain, the wind, the thunder, the 

63 



64 The Deification of Man. 

movements of the heavenly bodies — were sup- 
posed to be, not at all under law, as we now know 
them, and resulting only through natural causa- 
tion ; but altogether erratic, and according to 
the ^ fickle disposition of personal, inhabiting 
deities. Mankind, then, was utterly ignorant of 
the natural forces now comparatively familiar to 
men — gravitation, magnetism, molecular motion, 
the whole list of chemical, electrical and atmos- 
pheric forces which operate all about us. The 
ancients knew of no active force whatever except 
that of their own personal will. Naturally, 
therefore, they inferred that all actions outside 
of them, all the numberless activities of Nature, 
were the result likewise of will ; of the volition of 
personal, incorporated spirits, even though these 
animating clevas in which men believed were 
indeed invisible, and altogether unfathomed by 
mortal mind. In times as late as the seventeenth 
century, it is recorded, the great astronomer 
Kepler deemed every star propelled through the 
heavens by an attendant spirit. 

With such idea as this of the world's forces 
came naturally, in ancient times, the religion of 
" sacrifices," to the all-powerful deities believed 
to be present everywhere ; sacrifices in order 
that anger might be warded off, or blessing 
induced. Soon the sacrifices were accompanied 
by praises, and later by increasingly ritualistic 
services, with all species of pretended magic and 
divination. 

It was about the time of the decline of the 
Roman Commonwealth, and of the inauguration 
of the Empire, that, among the more educated — 
among the philosophers, and even in the priest- 
hood itself — the then-existing much corrupted 
worship of the Gods began to be intelligently and 
severely criticized, and even the existence itself 
of the popular deities called loudly in question. 
This very general and growing scepticism among 



The Deification of Man. 65 

the intelligent ones of the people was the result 
of a widening intellectual development and of 
increased knowledge of the outward world. And 
moreover (for the advanced views of men natur- 
ally differed, then as always) the educated classes, 
in their theories, speedily became divided into 
two great parties. One of these, the Epicureans, 
led by Lucretius and Petronius, regarded the 
Gods simply as the creation of fear, and utterly 
denied their existence. The other party, the 
Stoics, became more or less Pantheistic in their 
faith, believing in "one all-pervading soul of 
Nature." Yet these, no less than the Epicureans, 
treated with unutterable contempt all the pre- 
vailing legends which made Gods in the likeness 
of men. 

The worship of the old deities continued, in- 
deed, among the common people, for centuries, — 
such worship was taught, and even commanded, 
by those in power, that the masses might be kept 
in subjection. But among the philosophers the 
labor, thought and service formerly bestowed 
upon the Gods came to be devoted to attempts to 
explain the origin of the popular faith. Worship 
was changed into criticism — that the truth might 
be made clear. 

We have already seen what is the nineteenth 
century view of the Gods. But the modern the- 
ory, although in the present age first well elabor- 
ated, was not altogether unknown even among 
the philosophers of the early Empire. Some of 
the Stoics regarded the Gods as personifications 
of the different forms of Nature, — or, as they more 
often expressed it, of the "different attributes of 
the one all-pervasive power." Thus, as I have 
hinted, iEolus was the wind, Neptune the sea, 
Pluto was fire, Hercules represented the strength 
of God, Minerva the wisdom, Venus the outward 
beauty, Ceres the fertilizing energy, and so on. 
Indeed, it is recounted by Augustine, one of the 



66 The Deification of Man. 

most widely- educated of the early christian fa- 
thers, than more than a hundred years before the 
Empire, Varro had declared that " the soul of the 
world is God, and its parts are true divinities." 

It is mainly, however, with the theory of Euhem- 
eros the Sicilian that I have to do now. Through 
many centuries his thought, however erroneous, 
or only partially correct, held popular sway over 
vast numbers, and even till within a hundred 
years has had great force. Euhemeros endeav- 
ored the very simple process of tracing all myths 
and superstitions concerning the Gods to a nat- 
ural source in purely human incidents. He taught 
that u the Gods were originally great kings or 
heroes, whom their admirers had deified." "All 
that is related of the Gods," he said, "is but the 
exaggeration and glorification of common human 
events, which we may readily trace back to their 
historical sources." 

A very natural theory was this of Euhemeros, 
and very probably not without some foundation 
of truth. At any rate, whether partially true or 
wholly false concerning the deifications of long 
past time, this theory had a mighty influence in 
history subsequent to the propounded s own age. 
This is my point now. For, an easy transition it 
was, in that corrupt and servile period, from the 
doctrine of past dead kings and heroes exalted to 
divinity, to the actual adoration of living men as 
Gods. The reigning emperors, under the inspi- 
ration of this idea, began to demand, and to 
receive, worship and divine honors. Why not 
they, as well as those who had gone before? 
Looking, moreover, to other lands, the emperors 
found as a common feature in the codes of law 
and religion of the Hindus, and in Hindu prac- 
tice, the deification of reigning princes. This 
further urged them on, and apparently justified 
them, in their own course. In the Institutes of 
Manu it is written : * ' Even though a child, the king 



The Deification of Man. 67 

must not be treated lightly, from the idea that he 
is a mere mortal. No ; he is a powerful divinity 
who appears in mortal shape." Transmitted from 
India or Rome to the Eastern Branch of the chris- 
tian church, this custom prevails in Russia even 
at the present day. In the popular religious cat- 
echism, prepared by the government and thrust 
upon the people by the royal edict, the Czar is 
to-day addressed as "our God on earth." The 
divine right of kings to govern wrong, dead in 
western Europe, is yet promulgated east of the 
Baltic. In India, five hundred years before the 
christian era, after the death of Gautama the 
Buddha, he was deified, and to-day is worshiped 
as Lord by five hundred millions of people. Alex- 
ander "the Great" built temples for his own 
worship as a God. Beginning with Augustus, 
the Roman emperors from that time down were 
so worshiped. 

And in that age of the world, with these many 
imperial precedents in mind, religious adherents 
also, through Greece, Rome and Syria, began to 
canonize and deify their great spiritual leaders. 
The followers of Jesus did this, — indeed, they 
were compelled to do so. For, with so many 
Gods in their own religious galaxy, the Greeks 
and Romans, among the inferior ranks of whom 
Christianity made its first great conquests, would 
and did look with disdain on a religion having a 
merely human leader — a ISTazarene peasant. It is 
a remarkable fact that, if Jesus were really the 
almightybeing whom in the course of three cent- 
uries he came to be considered, his own family 
and nation should never have recognized him as 
such. Jesus' own countrymen, even his own fol- 
lowers, from Peter and John down, — the " Juda- 
izing christians," so-called, — maintained to the last 
the simple humanity of their leader. And it was 
only among the Hellenists, that is, the Grecian 
and Alexandrian proselytes, that the man of 



68 The Deification of Man. 

Nazareth came, in the course of three hundred 
years, to be voted " equal wih God and of the same 
substance with him." By a closely contested 
" vote," at the Council of Nicsea, as is now well- 
known to all, — 300 years after Jesus' death, — 
and then only after bitter controversy; only after 
actual personal blows on the part of the contend- 
ing bishops, and determined threats, falsity and 
intrigue on the part of the emperor Constantine, 
— was Jesus raised to the dignity of " God." Not 
until the year 325, when those priestly factions 
met at Nicsea, and stormed and howled and tore 
each other's theses to tatters, and spat in each 
other's faces in the presence of the emperor, was 
it decidedly known by the early christian world 
whether Jesus was a God-man or a Man-God. 

So much for the "natural history," so to speak, 
of the deification of individual men, — this in one 
of its phases. And all this, friends, has seemed 
to you, I know, in one sense, as indeed in one 
sense it has seemed to me, barren of profit, and 
small of incentive for us to-day. Almost all of 
this has been the deification of merely meretri- 
cious earthly power and pomp, or the exaltation 
of simply temporal human greatness and desire, 
to identity or equality with the Mysterious Un- 
known, the hidden reality, the everywhere- 
present spirit of all. 

But another and nobler phase of this old 
thought I would now touch upon, in the progress 
of the idea which I have in mind to set forth in 
this discourse. As mankind, through the long 
ages of its existence on earth, has grown, it has 
grown in mind and soul, as well as in things 
merely external and temporal. Long before the 
decline and death of the barren, profitless Greek 
and Roman idea of the Gods, in that idea's severe 
baldness, a deep spirituality had entered here and 
there into a few serious and worshipful souls, till 
these, now andthen in the course of centuries, 



The Deification of Man. 69 

came to bow in true, manly, uplifting, spiritual 
awe and adoration, before the mystery of the all- 
in-all. And also, which is really a more impor- 
tant point now, came to bow with earnest, hope- 
ful search before the miracle of human life and 
the mystery of human need and duty. Five hun- 
dred years before Jesus, Pythagoras came very 
near to the truth concerning u the divine, all- 
pervading soul of things" (those are his own 
words), and declared that " to be truthful, and to 
do good" comprises the whole duty of man. 
Socrates also, four centuries before Jesus, dwelt 
much in the " unseen yet eternal," and lived for 
the good of his fellows. Seneca, again, could 
speak of l ' the guardian and ruler of the universe, 
the soul and spirit of all, the cause of causes upon 
which all things depend, from whom all things 
proceed, by whose spirit we live, who comprises 
all we see." How exalted this, above the gibings 
and immoralities of the more popular Gods of 
his time ! how exalted above the gibings and 
immoralities even of Mcaea ! And Lucan, once 
more, could dwell upon the divine as "that 
majestic, all-pervasive spirit, whose throne is 
virtue and the universe." So in other lands, — in 
India, in Persia, in China and Egypt, and in 
Judea. And with all this growing spirituality and 
nobler exaltation of soul in the presence of the 
one only supreme power, came also, on the 
part of these later men, as previously in the case 
of Pythagoras and Socrates, lofty desires for the 
uplifting of humanity. Indeed, it was the great, 
the never-ending, the age-after-age recurring cry 
of the human soul for a loftier hope, for a nobler 
ideal, a truer light, than any man in those distant 
ages could seem to set forth, that in the course of 
progress impelled serious, religious souls in all 
lands, first to go altogether outside of humanity 
in search of that which should bring the satisfac- 
tion of their needs, — creating thus a spiritual 



70 The Deification of Man. 

pantheon; and in later years to seize enthusi- 
astically, passionately, on actual, exalted human 
lives, lives of men, like the Buddha of India 
and the reformer of G-alilee, — and uplift them to 
the divine. 

Moreover, down through all the eighteen hun- 
dred years since Jesus, this same hope and long- 
ing, and this manifest intent to deify, has been 
time and time again manifested on the part of 
christian writers, — the hope and longing being 
held up by them, unhesitatingly, as ample justi- 
fication in itself, of their assertion that the man 
Jesus was very God. Bishop Home acknowl- 
edged that long before Jesus was born the 
doctrine of the 4t Incarnation " was of universal 
prevalence. "That God should," he said, "in 
some extraordinary manner visit and dwell with 
man is an idea which, as we read the writings of 
the ancient heathen, meets us in a thousand 
forms." Another, again, said, after a hundred 
others, that "many of the first christians being 
converts from Gentileism, their imaginations 
were familiar with the reputed incarnation of 
heathen deities." "How natural it would be, 
then, for such converts to worship Jesus as a 
God, on account of his superior manhood." 

Men were crying, as they had cried for centu- 
ries, for a higher, truer, tenderer power than any 
which they deemed resident in themselves; — 
indeed, than any which Nature, in perceptible 
measure, had up to that time evolved. And 
dreaming that such power and love dwelt, per- 
sonally, in some distant godhead, yonder some- 
where above the stars, beyond the gold of sun- 
sets, or high over the purple of mountains, they 
cried to it to come down from the heights, to 
learn their sorrows and needs, be touched with a 
feeling of their infirmities, and give them aid. 
A God of all pervasive spirit they could not com- 
prehend — few can comprehend such yet, or 



The Deification of Man. 71 

appreciate its mighty, uplifting power when 
embraced by the soul. But a God coming down 
to earth from above, dwelling in the flesh, and 
thence returning to the skies, — such as that they 
could understand. And moreover, such a God as 
that, through his coming, would know in reality, 
thereafter, the temptations and sorrows of men, 
could pity their woes, and upon his return to his 
own realm would realize how, justly, to judge 
them, — that is, pityingly, — and forever after do 
them good. Men wanted God near, and were 
bound to have God near. Archbishop Tillotson, 
of the Church of England, as late as the seven- 
teenth century, went so far as to say that, there 
being in Jesus' time a great inclination in man- 
kind to the worship of a visible deity, "God was 
pleased to appear in our nature, that they who 
were so fond of a visible deity might have one " ! 
And even Dr. Thomas Arnold of the present 
century, who died only about forty years ago,* 
wrote thus : "The incarnation of Christ was very 
necessary, especially at a time when men were 
so accustomed to worship the highest Gods under 
the form of men." 

Upon this desire for and worship of a mere 
external deity, however, we have not time now 
to dwell. There is something better for us. For 
it is a truth, a deeper, nobler, more hopeful 
truth, that men have not only called down, as 
they have believed, a God from heaven to dwell 
among them, but have, indeed and in truth, 
raised up their moral and spiritual fellows to the 
height of God ! have made deities of those who, 
although actually, — in all points, — like as they 
were ; of the same blood and bones, of the same 
passions and needs, — were yet, at the same time, 
by purity of ancestry, and by resolute, long, 



* This discourse was written in December of 1884. 



72 The Deification of Man. 

personal self-restraint and self-reliance, a degree, 
or a number of degrees, above them, — and by 
their acquired mental and moral and spiritual 
superiority to the common run of humanity set 
an uplifting example, gave the world incentive 
and moral power to be even as they the 
* 'saviours" themselves were. Here were men 
of sympathy, who knew humanity's trials ; men 
who were near — nearer than any "God" could 
be who in himself had power other than human 
power ; men who set a noble example of truth, 
purity and good-will ; men who were able to 
conquer the evil about them and within them, 
put it under their feet, and say grandly, sub- 
limely to their fellows, "Do you also overcome ! 
for to him that overcometh will I, — even I, — 
give to sit down with me upon my throne, even 
as I also overcame, and am sat down with the 
Infinite Helpfulness upon its throne." " Will I 
give ' ' ! — how ? " By right and power of my love 
and devotion and ennobling example" 

What wonder that the race has made such men 
as these Gods ! — even though the inherent divinity 
of these men has indeed been simply and only in 
an ideal humanity well lived out, and in their 
courageous struggle for the good and the true, 
whatever the obstacles ! 

Such, then, is another and nobler chapter in 
the history of the Deification of Man, — a rich, 
golden-lettered chapter, if indeed, in one sense, 
a palimpsest, from earliest times, over and over 
written. 

The third chapter is yet all unwritten. I can 
not, therefore, recount it for you, friends, here 
and now. But there is to be another chapter. 
And I deem we may prophesy what it shall be. 
We cannot recount it, for it has not yet hap- 
pened. But we can look ahead; we can take 
the past and from it anticipate the future. And 
that is my whole idea in this discourse. All 



The Deification of Man. 73 

that I have yet said is preparatory to what I 
would say. 

Whatever the origin of their ideas, men have 
always dreamed of Gods ; — of beings of higher 
power, and generally of holier purpose, than 
their own power and purpose,— and yet still 
humanlike. And not only have they dreamed of 
Gods as men, but of men as Gods. 

Is there indeed no truth, — no living, vital soul 
of truth, — in humanity's age-long dream of 
" divine-human " incarnations ? Most certainly, — 
I believe, — there is! I do not believe that 
through thousands on thousands of years man's 
soarings and gropings the world over have been 
for nothing — altogether meaningless, founda- 
tionless — a mockery, a delusion. I believe, 
rather, that, however crude the idea as yet in our 
thought, — however much yet to be purified and 
enlarged, — the eternal life-presence of all worlds 
(God, with the clarified idea of God) is incar- 
nated, deep incarnated, in every human soul. 
Rather, is every human soul. The animating 
Spirit of Nature, wherever manifested (call it 
what you will), is forever one and the same. 
Our spirits are breaths of the Mighty Breath. 

What is really the truth concerning "God," 
friends, as that truth is to-day read (or dreamed) 
by the advance thought of the world — by the 
deepest, tenderest, most spiritual minds of the 
race? God is no longer a defined, bounded, 
circumscribed "deity," tied up anywhere within 
temporal and spacial limits, — but is the animat- 
ing genius of the universe, for the first time 
"infinite" and "eternal" in the minds of men 
since modern discovery and research have found 
God thrilling in the farthest star, and existing 
backward and forward forever beyond the limits 
of human appreciation; — while bound up with 
"God," inseparably and henceforth forever 
bound up with God, is Man. 



74 The Deification of Man. 

" Behold I show you a mystery. " The eternal 
world-presence — and Man ! 

And would that I had the power, friends, to 
set these forth to you, — these two mighty facts, 
— this one mighty fact of the universe, — this 
duality in unity, — as I have vision of it ! For in 
the reasonable thought of this there is inspiration 
to much upbuilding work. In the reasonable 
thought of this there is "joy and peace in 
believing." 

Let us meditate just a moment, as best we may 
in our ignorance and blindness, on this great 
theme, — and arise to the buffeting and mystery of 
life with renewed hope and faith, resolved on 
new, untiring endeavor, on stronger, nobler 
effort than we have ever yet made, to live worthy 
of our high vocation and exalted nature. 

Let us meditate on the eternal Presence, the 
World-Spirit, the overbrooding and interbrooding 
Energy of the Cosmos ; formless indeed, except 
as the universe is formed ; and inconceivable : 
yet manifested how abundantly to our thought 
and sense. The force which is the life of all 
things — unknown, indeed, and yet, in manifesta- 
tion again, how well known. The mysterious 
entity in which we and all things else are bound 
up and inclosed. 

" Breathing in the thinker's creed, 
Pulsing in the hero's blood ; 
Secret of the morning stars, 
Motion of the oldest hours ; 
Nature's uncreated Word, 
Atom and Infinity ! " 

Mother of man's time-traveling generations, 
the breath of his nostrils, the heart-blood of his 
heart. The inspiration of the gently- circling 
planet, and of the wild, fiery swoop of the comet, 
and of the red, gushing torrent which courses 
through every vein and artery in our bodies — 



The Deification of Man. 75 

star and pulse- beat throbbing rythmically to- 
gether. Life that thrills in the inaudible current 
that surges through every leaf in the summer 
forest ; life that invigorates the tiniest grass- 
blade. Law that disposes the unvarying forma- 
tion of every crystal and every snow-flake. A 
mighty, mystic presence as widely and deeply 
interfused throughout and among all worlds as 
is the enveloping atmosphere and the mysterious 
ether beyond. 

" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

And let us meditate on Man. On man as we 
now know him, — inhabited, from the very first, 
even from the time when as yet he was only as 
the formless vapor or the senseless clod, by the 
potential spirit of the eternal. Man, — 

"For whose birth the whole creation yearned 
Through countless ages of the morning world ; 
Who, first through fiery vapors fiercely hurled, 
Next to the senseless crystal slowly turned, 
Then to the plant, which grew to something more, 
Humblest of creatures that draw breath of life ; 
Wherefrom, through infinities of patient pain, 

he came finally to consciousness and growing 
power. 

" While the long way behind is prophecy 
Of those perfections which are yet to bey 

Without doubt, in man himself — thrilled 
through, as he is, and animated by the life- 
breath of the universe, — exists power potential 
for his every needful victory. In man himself ■ \ the 
God" is forever incarnated. And men dream 



76 The Deification of Man. 

not of this, nor put the God-power within them 
to helpful use, but still search longingly without, 
and pray upward empty words into the void of 
space, while the living presence of the worlds 
thrills and throbs all about them, crying to them 
to accept its great salvation ! Outside, men have 
sought ; upward and yonder, for sympathy, and 
nearness, and high example ; for power to con- 
quer evil, for providential aid and succor. But 
every " saviour " of the race, time and time again, 
invariably, has proved to the world, even though* 
he himself may have held differently, that in man 
— in generous, whole-souled, lofty-minded Man — 
is the God of help and sympathy and patience 
and providence. 

Would that the world might recognize this, and 
men begin to act out their Godhood ! — making 
themselves a providence to each other ; making 
themselves incarnate love and pity and sympathy 
and patience and good -will, and putting away 
from them forever all selfishness and avarice and 
hatred and evil passion. What a bound onward 
would humanity make, if such era as this might 
only come about ; if men would only quit their 
fruitless wailings and chantings and prayings to 
a God outside, — a misunderstood, practically non- 
existent God, — and bend their prayers to the God 
within ! For therein, friends, lies the future hope 
of the world — in self-reliance ! complete self- 
reliance ! — not forever in supine dependence! 
"This is the way, the truth, and the life." 

" I saw on earth another light 

Than that which lit my eye, 
Come forth as from the soul within, 

And from a higher sky. 

" 'Twas brighter far than noonday's beam ; 

It shone from God within, 
And lit as by a lamp from heaven 

The world's dark track of sin." 



The Deification of Man. 77 

The age -accumulating dream of the world, the 
universal longing of man for a present, helpful, 
sympathetic God is not all a mockery. But 
surely, if there were any power outside, which, 
in the nature of things as the universe exists, 
could help and save, long ere this, to relieve the 
world's sin and misery, it would have stretched 
one finger forth, or breathed one helpful, answer- 
ing word ! But that is not the nature of the 
universe-power, nor the way it works. We 
know, to-day, that every step of humanity's 
progress has been a step taken by man. So far 
as is concerned the uplifting and growth of man, 
the universal power works through men. We 
know, to-day, that every word of hope and light 
ever uttered for humanity's guidance has been a 
word spoken by man. We know there is a pro- 
gressive God incarnate in him ; a God that does, 
in pure and lofty souls, sympathize and help and 
uplift, and cheer the world on. 

That is all. That is the third chapter. It 
needs no elaboration. Only, let us strive, friends, 
henceforth, each one of us,— as we all may, and 
as we have never done before, — both for our own 
sake and for the sake of others, — to realize well 
our possibilities, our inherent divinity ; bring it 
forth into the light. And live as recognizing 
ourselves infinite souls, a help and a joy and an 
uplifting power to all about us. 

Men make themselves deified. They are not 
made so by others. Others come in only to 
ratify the deification. A throne awaits us all, if 
we are faithful, — a throne in the kingdom of the 
world's progress ; a throne whose reign shall be 
a helpful life, — the exaltation of Mankind. 



Equilibrium. 

I am to speak of Equilibrium. In other words, 
of self-control, or self-possession. 

To use one or two colloquial terms, the major- 
ity of men are "crotchety," "cranky, " "erratic," 
lacking in balance, lacking in stability, given to 
the following of impulse, given to impatience, 
and in some degree, greater or less, to vice and 
passion — their bodies warring against their 
minds, their minds against their bodies, and their 
souls, often, against both. Equilibrium ! What 
a boon this would be to most men ! Self-control, 
— self-possession, — these should be their "salva- 
tion " ! 

Even physically, it would seem that Nature did 
not originally intend man to stand upright ! It 
is a somewhat singular fact — or appears so, at 
first glimpse — that, of all animals on earth, man 
is the only one, physically speaking, that is out 
of structural equilibrium. Not many people are 
aware of the fact, perhaps ; but, as every sculptor 
knows, and possibly every anatomist, the body 
of a man is decidedly "top-heavy," as we use 
that term. No perfectly formed statue of a man 
or woman would ever stand upon its feet. It 
would topple over. So with man himself, if, 
from the very first, he were not continually if 
indeed unconsciously "holding himself up." 
Man's physical structure is such that his " center 
of gravity," so to speak, — the "line of direction" 
of his body, to use the technical phrase, — falls 
outside the base. Man is the only animal that in 
walking turns out the toes; — this obviously to 

79 



80 Equilibrium, 

increase the breadth of the base supporting the 
body. Watch a child learning to walk, or to 
stand alone. How difficult a matter the child 
finds it ! How it sways, backward and forward, 
catching at the table-cover, — and leans this way 
and that', reaching for a chair or the window-sill. 
Watch a drunken man, whose brains are so 
befogged that even his unconscious will is, for 
the time being, suspended. How he totters, and 
stumbles,— and shortly goes down in the gutter. 
The child, however, by frequent practice, soon 
acquires the power, or accomplishment, of bal- 
ancing its body to a nicety. V ery soon it is so 
perfectly in possession of the power of equilib- 
rium that chairs, the wall, even mother's hand, 
are altogether needless longer. In a brief time 
further, even all conscious personal effort in 
standing or walking is suspended. Thenceforth 
the will operates wholly unconsciously. The 
human being walks or runs or leaps automati- 
cally as it were, without thought or care. But, 
naturally, the human body is not in equilibrium. 

The explanation of this singular feature in 
man's physical structure — this feature of "top- 
heaviness'' — is perhaps not difficult to work out. 
The evolutionist, I presume, would say at once, 
— though I have never seen such idea presented 
in this connection, — Man's upright position is 
really an acquirement ; is not his original nor his 
normal attitude. He once went upon "all 
fours"; and now, naturally, having come to 
stand upon two limbs, finds equilibrium and 
locomotion difficult. 

Such explanation as this of that peculiarity 
inherent in man's physical structure of which I 
have spoken, leads me just here to a point of 
interest and value. Man's position as an upright 
being is an acquirement. He did not have it at 
the first, — that is, away back in the far centuries. 
It is something which he has come into, in the 



Equilibrium. 81 

process of his development during hundreds of 
thousands of years. 

To a great many people, the idea that man has 
descended from the lower animals — or, rather, 
more correctly, the idea that man has risen, been 
evolved from the lower animals, is an idea very 
distasteful. I myself, however, do not see why 
it should be so. For me, there is much of encour- 
agement, much of hopeful prophecy, in the 
thought, — especially when it is contrasted with 
the more popular theory, the church-theory, of 
" creation." The older theological idea concern- 
ing man's origin, including as it necessarily does 
the idea of man's "fall," makes man to-day the 
degraded offspring of a race once far higher and 
purer than it now is. The doctrines of evolution, 
on the contrary, show man to-day the exalted 
offspring of a race once ignorant and weak. If 
the former theory, the theological thought, be 
indeed true, and man's history on earth be really 
one of retrogression from primal glory and hap- 
piness, then is there no depth, logically following 
out the line of this argument, to which man may 
not yet, still farther, fall. This is legitimate 
reasoning. What of hope or light is here I can- 
not see. But if man, through all the past, has 
risen, and to-day, from out of weakness has 
come into strength, out of darkness has come 
into light, and is still in possession of all 
his normal powers, in possession even of added 
powers, — then is there no height to which he 
may not yet, still farther, attain. Who would 
not belong to such race as the latter, rather than 
to such a race as the former? Who would not 
rather be a risen man than a fallen saint ! 

Surely, the high from the low seems, in every 
way, better and worthier than the low from the 
high ; the high from the low seems the more 
natural and more consistent method; the high 
from the low rather than the low from the high 



82 Equilibrium. 

seems the method more hopeful for man and 
more honorable to Nature. 

" Beneath this starry arch 

Naught resteth or is still ; 
But all things have their march, 

As if by one great Will. 
Moves one, move all, — hark to the footfall ! 

On, on, forever ! " 

In Nature, in the long run, there is no retro- 
gression. There is no "fall." All, in the wide 
spiral sweep, is progress. At times, — though 
always temporarily, — there may seem to be a 
"going back," .a falling off in grace, in beauty, 
in power, in apparent meaning. But there is 
never a halt; and after the "falling away," — of 
a moment's space, — comes an onward leap of a 
thousand years. 

Marvelous is the sublime interworking force ! 
Before the mighty mystery of the unknown — 
before the sublime reality of the universe's life- 
energy we bow in awe, in wonder, in adoration. 
We can not fathom it. We can not explain it. 
Much less can we "explain it away" as some 
are charged with trying to do. But who wishes 
to explain it away ! Our wish, the rather, is to 
take it into our lives ! our desire is to open our 
souls to it. Bather than wishing to do away 
with it, we bow before it in uplifting, silent, 
soulful aspiration, and rejoice that we are part 
and parcel of it all; that we cannot be lost to it, 
nor separated from it, whether in life or death ! 
rejoice that we are of it, that we came out from 
it, that we have our existence in it, that finally 
we go back to it ! Much less, indeed, than fath- 
oming the greatness of the Eternal Mystery, 
and "explaining God away," we do not fathom 
even our own greatness, nor can we explain 
ourselves. We do not see one step before us ; 
we do not understand what lies one day ahead of 



Equilibrium. 83 

us. We only "feel that we are greater than we 
know." We dimly grasp that even " now are we 
the sons of God" (the offspring of the eternal 
energy), though indeed " it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be." And in this faith we have 
courage to go on. Far from denying or doubting, 
or striving to explain away, we wait with eager 
hope till all shall be revealed. 

This is the reverent attitude, I am confident, 
in which every earnest and sincere teacher of the 
modern ideas of man's origin stands, throughout 
the world, to-day. Says Prof. Huxley himself, — 
4 'So far as I can humbly venture to offer an 
opinion on such a subject, the purpose of our 
being in existence, the highest object that human 
beings can set before themselves, is not the pur- 
suit of any such chimera as the annihilation of 
the unknown ; it is simply the unwearied endeavor 
to remove its boundaries a little further from our 
sphere of action." 

The removal of the boundaries from man's 
sphere of action ! Could anything be more 
desirable ? Yet that is what all the earnest ones 
among the holders and teachers of modern scien- 
tific doctrines have in mind — action ! Self-help 
on the part of the world ! Not the doing away 
with a reasonable idea of the universe's unfath- 
omed force, but the ux^building of men ! Action, 
self-control, self-guidance, on the part of human- 
ity, through a knowledge of the ways in which, 
in the past, life and progress have really come to 
be ; and through a knowledge of how life and 
health and happiness and growth may be yet 
more exalted and ennobled, and mankind gain 
the mastery over all the evil forces and tenden- 
cies which now hold it back and keep it low. 

Humanity's complete self-control ! Perfect 
" self-possession " on the part of men! A com- 
plete and perfect Equilibrium, physical, mental, 
moral, spiritual ; Equilibrium in all possible 



84 Equilibrium. 

directions ! This is what the modern thought of 
man's origin, and of man's growth upward, has 
in mind for humanity, in all of its researches, 
and in all its publication of new truth. 

And in this line let us continue our thought, 
now, a little farther. 

I said, in beginning, that man's power of physi- 
cal equilibrium, his power of standing erect 
bodily, with his face towards heaven, and of 
maintaining himself in that position while at 
repose or while walking, was an acquired power. 
1 said that man did not have this power at the 
first, but that it is something which he has come 
into. It is something which man has gained: 
and which he gained in the first place, without 
doubt, through much of pain and stumbling ; 
through much of patience and fresh trial and 
determined will. Nature is never in a hurry 
when she is bringing something grand to be. 
Moreover, it is something, as I said, which every 
child has anew to learn, in some degree, though 
indeed the accomplishment is now largely hered- 
itary or instinctive. 

A glance upward towards the stars, perhaps, 
or towards a cluster of high-hanging fruit, or 
towards a bunch of gorgeous blossoms on the 
topmost bough of a tree, — some such thing as 
this was it which first carried man's face, cent- 
uries ago, skyward, — heavenward. Repeated 
glances upward drew his arms and hands also, 
in time, sympathetically, from the earth, that he 
might also grope upward, as well as gaze, — 
feeling after that which drew him on; " feeling 
after it if haply he might find it." And so he 
grew. 

From very low powers and very low forms 
indeed has man progressed, through the countless 
centuries. But upward he has come, till now, 
even physically, he has reached grace, suppleness 
and power, so that men have come to talk even 



Equilibrium. 85 

of "the human form divine." And all his pro- 
gress — this is my point now : all his progress, in 
every direction, — mental and spiritual, as well as 
physical, — has been through this same upward 
look! Through the desire for something higher ! 
Through the inworking divine energy throbbing 
within his soul and urging him on. All his 
progress has been made through keeping his 
natural vision open to the marvelous beauty of 
the outward world ; — through keeping his natur- 
ally growing mind open to the beauty of knowl- 
edge, open to the desirability of new attainment, 
of ever-fresh acquirement ; — through the keeping 
of his soul ever open and responsive to the 
upward-drawing cords of that Over-Soul, that 
interfused spirit of all things in the universe, 
which we call Divine. 

And so must it ever be. So has it been ; so is it 
now : and so will it be, so must it be, if by man 
complete self-possession, the highest self-posses- 
sion, the complete equilibrium of all his powers, 
is ever gained. It will be through the upward 
look! 

And moreover, now, it will not be a light task 
that he has before him. It will be a difficult 
task. Perilous, oftentimes, has been man's 
journey upward thus far. Yet a mighty goal 
has ever beckoned him on, — and the prize has 
seemed worth the race. In labors, in severest 
toils, he has been abundant ; in stripes above 
measure, in disappointments more frequent, in 
deaths oft. Myriads of times he has been beaten 
by Nature's rods — Nature has often seemed not 
to care for him overmuch. Often she has stoned 
him, often she has poisoned him, and stung him 
with serpents. And so will it be for many seasons 
yet. Thousands of times man has suffered ship- 
wreck, millions of days and nights he has been 
in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of 
waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own 



86 Equilibrium. 

world-fellows, in perils in cities, in perils in the 
wilderness ; in weariness and painfulness, in 
watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings 
often, in cold and nakedness, — this has been his 
lot. Through all this he has passed. Yet he has 
been ever courageous, and has ever progressed, 
has ever kept his face towards the sky, his gaze 
on the stars, his mind on knowledge, his heart 
on good. Till we see him where he is to-day. 
Through thousands on thousands of years he has 
been seeking Equilibrium — mental, and moral, 
and spiritual equilibrium ; has been fighting the 
low things around him and in him, and seeking 
the high things. And now, — now, in this age, — 
a hundred evil demons vanquished, a hundred 
hold-backs and superstitions forever past, — he is 
coming to where he shall find equilibrium. And 
to where, having found it, he shall perfect it. 

How ! How ! We all are interested here. 
How is it that man now, at last, shall really find 
that which so long he has sought, and, having 
found it, perfect it ? 

I say again, it shall not be done easily. The 
movement towards equilibrium was not begun 
easily — we know that. It has not been approxi- 
mated easily — we have seen that. Then shall its 
fruition not be easy either — we may be very 
confident of that. Harden your muscles, there- 
fore, friends, and make stout your hearts and 
your wills. For, if you are men, you must take 
part in this conflict, — you must not shirk your 
share in it. 

And the victory is sure. We have encourage- 
ment. Here and there, in every age, some few 
men have risen, who have well been able to say 
to us, "Not only from our study, our knowledge 
of humanity's past history, as a whole ; not only 
from our limited observation of the life-struggles 
of other individual men and women, but out of 
our own wearying and painful, yet ever hopeful 



Equilibrium. 87 

experience, we can say this to all of you, our 
fellows : ' Harden your muscles,' and so on ; and 
can tell you that the task before humanity, in the 
matter in hand, is not an easy one, and yet that, 
victory is sure" 

But tell me, friends, what you think of it ! you 
who, when you would do good, find evil ever 
present with you, — tell me ! You who know that 
the price of all true attainment in life is ceaseless 
activity, yet find yourselves slothful, and easily 
disposed to put duty off, — tell me ! You who 
know that every soul that reaches an exalted 
height of being does so through the constant 
presence and nurture of a lofty zeal and ambi- 
tion, and yet feel that for the attainment of high 
ideals you have not the persistent will, — tell me ! 
You who know that serenity of spirit under trial, 
and the manful endurance of evil and of tempta- 
tion, are necessary to true beauty of life, and yet 
find yourselves peevish and cross-grained and 
easily in despair, — tell me ! You who know the 
purity of heart and of life, the putting away of 
evil thoughts and the successful combating of 
evil promptings, that are necessary to perfect 
standards of soul, and even to perfect health of 
body, and yet who find yourselves, how often ! 
harboring impure thoughts and giving way to 
petty vices, and meeting, both in soul, and in 
nerve, bone, and marrow, the sting that follows 
broken law, — tell me ! You who know the value 
of time, and how every moment should be made 
to count, and yet so often waste hours and days, 
— tell me ! You who know the loyal example of 
honesty, generosity and sobriety which every 
true man should set in the sight of his fellows, 
yet allow yourselves to perpetrate meannesses 
and be cowardly rather than courageous in the 
presence of truth and goodness, — tell me ! You 
who know all the hundred and the thousand 
right demands and necessities which fall upon 



88 Equilibrium. 

you as men and women, in every department of 
life, and which, if you are true and loyal to your 
ideal, you know you must bravely meet and 
determinedly fulfill,— yet find yourselves weak 
and vacillating and easily put to rout and even 
to despairing night, — you tell me ! Do you think 
that the attainment of perfect equilibrium in 
heart and soul and mind on the part of humanity 
as a whole is any light thing ? is to be an easy 
thing ? 

No, we must recognize the fact ! It is not to 
be an easy thing. It is to be a very difficult 
thing. But perfect Equilibrium must sometime 
be gained, or true peace, true harmony and sym- 
metry will never be man's lot. We can not 
emphasize this truth too often or too much, even 
while recognizing the immensity of the problem. 
But the prize is still worth the race. It will 
indeed be a matter to tax every man's strength 
and loyalty to the utmost. But the gain is sure. 
It is to be a matter ten times more difficult, and 
perhaps requiring ten times more centuries, than 
the whole past progress of man including even 
his struggle up from the lowest animalism 
to that point where first he lifted his gaze to 
heaven a conscious soul, and began to dream the 
dreams of God, of morality, and of immortality ! 
Because down through all these hundreds of 
centuries during which the race has been slowly 
stumbling up out from lowness and ignorance 
into nobility, it has been bringing along with it, 
together with the gradually growing spiritual, 
together with its aspirations after the divine, 
some remnant large or small of all the passions 
and jealousies, and instinctive avarice, and re- 
vengefulness, and evil appetites, of its centuries 
of previous animalism. And all these things — 
every evil incentive of mind and body, every 
incentive to base, abnormal gratification, and to 
the pampering of low appetites, — all these things 



Equilibrium. 89 

must be brought into full, instant, active obedience 
to the warnings of reason and the demands of 
the will, before man stands up free, harmonious, - 
symmetrical, — body, mind and soul all in com- 
plete and perfect equilibrium. Thousands of 
years of struggle are yet before the race. We 
have to work on long lines. We can not say to 
humanity, with a single word of miracle, "Be 
clean!" But the great work can be done. It 
must be done. And I know, friends, that some- 
time it will be done. I look ahead down the 
years, — many though they be, — and see the 
glorious consummation ! I believe in it ! And I 
want, in some reasonable way, to have a part in 
it. I want you, in some reasonable way, to have 
a part in it. "The way man has come," one 
has well said, "points the way that he is to 
go. And I deem he has not come, as yet, even 
to the^ half-way house upon his upward climb." 
Inspiring words ! 

The mighty work of the developing spirit of 
the worlds in the soul of man has by no means 
yet reached its full. It will not have reached its 
full until that far time — would indeed that it 
might more speedily come than we have wise 
grounds for hoping! — when man's every lofty 
desire shall meet fruition in act! When soul and 
body shall be no longer at war ; when all that is 
low and base in man's nature shall be rooted out, 
and the high and noble take their place ; when 
obedience to the laws of life, and the happy com- 
bination of all proper functions with their legiti- 
mate gratification shall insure perfect health of 
body and unclouded activity and tranquillity of 
mind ; when serenity of disposition shall be with 
men, rather than bitterness and weariness and 
dissatisfaction ; when smiles shall take the place 
of grief ; when men, through larger co-operation, 
shall rest from their severer labors, from all 



90 . Equilibrium. 

pain, from all corroding cares and weakness ; 
when they shall hunger no more, neither thirst 
any more ; when there shall be no more war nor 
deceit nor oppression, — for all these things shall 
have passed away. 

I believe, friends, there will come such a time 
as this, — though it may not be for centuries. I 
believe the developing spirit of the universe has 
it yet in store for men ! This has been the 
dream of the world from earliest recorded times, 
and it shall yet have fulfillment. Men have been 
aiding it on, themselves, always — the leaders of 
men have, at least, — the Moseses and the Buddhas, 
the Zoroasters and Confuciuses, the Jesuses and 
the Emersons, the Darwins and the Spencers. 
And so, in a smaller way, all ministers of good, 
all teachers of truth and progress, however 
humble. So, too, the smallest real workers in 
every village and city and country-town through- 
out the world, who strive for the moral health of 
the community, who take the great questions of 
temperance and of social purity and of political 
uprightness to their bosoms, and strive in any 
rational way to solve them. So again, every 
individual man and woman in private life is a 
laborer too, when each strives with himself, under 
whatever incentive, whether of religion, or 
ethics, or simple love of the good, to make and 
keep himself true and pure and clean, putting 
away all impatience and covetousness, and indo- 
lence, and evil passion, and opening the soul to 
Truth and the Light. 

May we all have strength to do well our part ! 
May we not be discouraged at the magnitude of 
the task. I know it seems sometimes like trying 
to stand a pyramid on its apex — this struggle of 
the world's leaders for the exaltation and benefit 
of humanity in the mass. I know it seems some- 
times like trying to plow the air — our own indi- 



Equilibrium. 91 

vidual struggle with our own lives, our endeavor 
to make them fair and pure and sweet. But let 
not even this affright or dishearten us. Every 
little helps on. And social progress — the " sal- 
vation " of the world from evil and selfishness — 
depends altogether upon individual progress. 
While there is courage, moreover, there is always 
hope. And we know that the end, both for our- 
selves and for the world, if we are earnest, must 
be good. We may not see the fruition — time is 
brief and we go our way. But there shall be 
fruition — others shall see it, and enter into it. 

"Not unbelief, nor ignorance, nor doubt, 

Shall keep our heaven out : 

Though this, and this indeed, is present hell, — 

To see afar a brighter future shine, 

With light as from some hidden shrine,' ' — 

and, clogged by fear or doubt, give up in despair, 
turning ourselves only to old-time thought, or 
else only to pitiful unbelief. Infidelity ? Atheism ? 
Nay, the only real atheist is "he who does not 
believe that an ideal justice and truth can conquer 
in the world " ; the only real atheist is he, of 
whatever religious or irreligious creed, who does 
not believe that the universe is on the side of 
right, and that the final outcome of things for all 
men shall be sweet and sane. 

But everything depends upon ourselves. Let 
us strive then, friends, ourselves, henceforth, 
each one of us, for greater approach to true self- 
possession than we have ever before known ; for 
greater approach to equilibrium of life ; strive for 
patience and purity ; for full, free, complete 
self-control, and growth, in every department of 
our nature. So then our bodies shall no longer 
war against our minds, nor our minds against 
our bodies, nor our souls against either. Then, 
our physical frames will be indeed fit temples of 



92 Equilibrium. 

the holy spirit of life that is in them ; our minds, 
through careful study and wise use of opportuni- 
ties, will behold more of the truth and beauty of 
this marvelous world in which we live ; our souls 
will be built up in saving faith and trust. For 
thus shall we not be afraid, nor ashamed, as men 
and women, to lift our faces, as once our far 
ancestors lifted theirs for the first time, towards 
the unbounded skies, our eyes being opened 
towards the stars, reading in them a manifesta- 
tion of the hidden beauty and life which called 
them, as it called us, into being, and which still, 
pulsating in our souls as in the farthest suu, 
invites us, too, to harmony with itself , the eternal 
spirit of things, in which alone is peace. 



"The Holy Spirit." 

The present age, we are accustomed to say, is 
an age of ever-changing thought, through the 
attainment of higher truth ; an age, too, of new, 
scientific inspiration and enthusiasm, through the 
presence of this truth. Yet was there, undoubt- 
edly, in much of the older thought, however 
hidden beneath form and phrase, an ever-present 
"soul of truth," possessing its own inspiration 
and engendering its own enthusiasm. What is 
itself truth does not ever really change. Its out- 
ward garb or expression changes. 

It is a delight, oftentimes, in the present age, 
to trace out, so far as we can, by comparison 
with the new, the spirit of truth which inhabited 
the old. It is something of this kind that I pro- 
pose to do in this discourse. From the stand- 
point of modern scientific thought I wish to speak 
on a very old-time theme. By contrast, however, 
rather than by comparison, the old view of our 
subject will be seen ; I will not have opportunity, 
in one discourse, for direct and formal compari- 
son. I propose to speak of "The Holy Spirit." 
And I trust that in our present, modern treat- 
ment of the theme, much that has often 
seemed far away and mystical to us may be 
brought near, and proved of incentive and of 
strength. 

A divine idea ! A holy spirit ! Every noble 
and helpful idea which takes possession of the 
hearts of men and lifts them upward ; which 
tends to perfect mankind, in bram, in body, in 
spirit, is a divine idea. And the spirit in which 

93 



94 "The Holy Spirit." 

all true leaders and inspirers of men labor, and 
have labored since the beginning of the world, is 
a holy spirit. 

Moreover, without the animating, encouraging, 
directing influence of a great idea — an idea which 
takes possession of heart and brain and will ; 
which reigns supreme over the life, determining 
every thought and act, and this extending often- 
times over the space of many years — there never 
yet was accomplished a magnificent work, a 
work worthy of record as the turning point either 
of a nation's history or of the humblest individual 
life. Possessed by some divine, animating, all- 
absorbing "holy spirit" men must be, or their 
lives are insipid, stagnant, valueless, and so far 
as is concerned a noble warfare with life's thou- 
sand ills, or any influence for good which they 
leave behind them, they might as well never have 
lived. Look at the Buddha, at Jesus, at Con- 
fucius, at Wendell Phillips — men of influence 
age-long and great — the essential spirit of life in 
whom must, in the nature of things, 'have influ- 
ence over the lives of men through all the ages 
to come. They were men possessed of a great idea. 
A mighty thought was in the deep, peaceful heart 
of them ; a purpose, which was all in all to them 
throughout their lives. All in all to them ! Their 
surroundings, their circumstances, were nothing 
to them ! Poverty, persecution, alienation from 
home and friends, personal indignities without 
number — all these, if not unnoted by them, were 
at least uncared for ; all these were as nothing — 
if only they might pursue that idea of theirs 
(whatever it might be), and propagate it ; if only 
through their life and teachings, through their 
sufferings, through their own manifest love and 
patience and the example of their own fidelity, 
mankind might be brought to that vision of the 
eternally true, the eternally just, to that vision of 



"The Holy Spirit:' 95 

life and of duty, which they had been empowered 
to look upon. 

They were possessed of a holy spirit. Their 
power was the power of a holy spirit. And 
through them great wonders were worked for 
the uplifting and benefit of men. 

But this spirit, or power, of theirs was not ex- 
ceptional in kind with them, — rather was it 
exceptional only in degree, — from the spirit for 
good possessed by all men. Their spirit was a 
spirit which, if educated, encouraged, and heark- 
ened to, may be heard by every man, appointing 
him to some great work ; if not indeed to the 
mighty work of some great hero, at least to a life 
of labor, of patience, of fidelity, of constant hope. 

Ponder, a moment, the different manner in 
which the spirit which was in them has affected 
a few others of the world's leaders. The spirit 
which was in them is a spirit which inspires 
different men to different work. It appointed 
Abraham to leave the land and the home, and 
the Gods, of his fathers, and go forth he knew 
not whither — though to the founding, as it 
proved, of a new and influential nation. It 
appointed Moses to the leadership of Israel in its 
migration from Egypt. It appointed Galileo to 
scan the heavens and discover something of the 
stellar verities, and the rotundity and motion of 
the earth. It appointed Luther to his battle with 
the hierarchy, and his victory over the church in 
favor of independent thought. It appointed 
Columbus to discover a new world, and Wash- 
ington and Paine to save that newly discovered 
country from the unjust demands of an older 
and mightier people. It appointed Theodore 
Parker to his work in freeing true religion from 
the usurpation of forms and creeds. It appointed 
Sir Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin, and a 
host of living writers whom we might name, to 
their great work in solving the mystery of the 



96 "The Holy Spirit." 

age and formation of the earth and the origin of 
the different forms of life inhabiting the globe, — 
giving men new incentive to faithful living and 
constant upward struggle. And so on. In all 
these cases it was the same holy spirit at work 
which appointed the man Jesus and the man 
Gautama and the man Phillips to their forceful 
life-work, — the preaching of a truer gospel to the 
poor (as was the case with all of them), the 
healing of the broken-hearted, the preaching of 
deliverance to all captives, of recovery of sight to 
the morally blind, the setting at liberty them 
that are bruised, the preaching of the acceptable 
year of humanity. 

The power which dwelt in Jesus and Confucius 
and Isaiah and Phillips and Emerson, and the 
rest, was not an exceptional power, not an exclu- 
sive power, but one possible to all. As Jesus 
himself is reported once to have said to his 
disciples, and, through them, to the world for all 
time, " Ye shall receive power," — power like 
unto his own ; power greater than his own, 
indeed; for, " Greater works than these of mine 
shall ye do," he hinted to them on another occa- 
sion, " since I go away." As if he had said, 
"Notwithstanding the high place, my disciples, 
to which you would exalt me in this new work 
in behalf of men, I have made only a beginning, 
and you will acid to what I have done." And on 
the first occasion of which I spoke he told them 
how, as I began to quote : " Ye shall receive 
power," he said to them, — power to go forward 
with this new gospel of peace and good-will, — 
"after that the holy spirit is come upon you." 
The holy spirit, that is (as I understand him to 
have meant), really to continue his work ; the 
divine desire and impulse to seek truth, and to 
pursue it, as he had done ; to search out the 
origin and meaning of life ; to raise the fallen, 
cheer the blind, reach out a hand to those lower 



"The Holy Spirit." 97 

clown. In a word, the holy spirit which should 
inspire his followers to lift up the world. This 
was the spirit which animated Jesus himself, and 
which animated every true soul who, during all 
the history of mankind, has labored to educate 
and elevate the world, to give nobler ideas of 
life, to point men to a higher destiny, to combine 
the sympathies of men in all nations, cause wars 
and social injustice to cease, bring light out of 
darkness and joy out of sorrow. The holy spirit 
which animated them all was the natural spirit of 
humanity at its best. 

Humanity's natural spirit was it, I say. There 
was nothing about it that was supernatural. 
And yet, at the same time, it was divine. The 
natural, at its best, is always the divine. 

I said, in beginning, — Every noble and helpful 
idea which takes possession of the hearts of men 
and lifts them upward ; which tends to perfect 
mankind, in brain, in body, in spirit, is a divine 
idea ; and the spirit in which all true leaders and 
inspirers of men labor and have labored since 
the beginning of the world is a holy spirit. In 
the view of modern science the universe is perme- 
ated by a progressive influence ; a " holy spirit " 
(we may safely dare call it) of truth and Tight- 
ness; a tendency, name it what we will, of in- 
creasing perfection. It pervades the stars in 
their orbits, the lily in the field, the vine on the 
tree, the tree itself. And it pervades man. And 
in planet and lily and vine and tree and man it 
is essentially one and the same. The holy spirit 
which was in Jesus and all other leaders of men 
was this holy spirit ; which to a certain extent is 
in you and me is this. 

And this holy spirit is divine, did I say ? It is 
the All-in-all in man ! It is the developing spirit 
of the universe ! the upward-reaching, outward 
reaching, onward-reaching power, or faculty, or 
energy, dwelling everywhere, — dwelling in us 



98 "The Holy Spirit:' 

and in all things, — and making, eternally, towards 
truth and Tightness and progress. It is science's 
noblest word to the modern world that this is 
"the spirit of the eternal, that giveth under- 
standing" ! 

"A subtle chain of countless rings 
The nearest to the farthest brings ; 
The eye reads omens where it goes, 
And speaks all languages the rose ; 
And, striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 

And every good work of man, — whether victory 
over sin and ignorance, whether the granting of 
liberty to a people enslaved, whether the discov- 
ery of a new planet or a new continent, or the 
invention of a sewing-machine, or the writing of 
a helpful book, or the raising of a fine crop of 
wheat, or the faithful performance of our own 
little duties from day to day, — all these, so far as 
they tend to the life and growth and true progress 
of ourselves and of the world, are inspired by 
one and the same holy spirit. 

"There is no great, and no small, 
To the soul that maketh all ; 
And where it cometh, all things are ; 
And it cometh everywhere." 

Pervading the universe in all its vast extent is 
the developing, upholding, animating spirit 
which is the energy of the visible worlds and of 
all they contain ; the power out of which we, you 
and I, have come, body and mind, and of which 
we are a part. To be in perfect accord with this 
spirit of power which fills the universe is perfect 
existence for every atom which goes to make up 
the throbbing worlds. To be in perfect accord 
with this spirit of life is perfect existence for 
everything that has breath — is ' ' true communion " 
with the universe's " holy spirit." To be out of 



"The Holy Spirit:' 99 

harmony with this spirit of life and power is ruin 
and disaster, pain and death. For the planet 
which should swerve a hair's breadth from its 
appointed course, utter ruin, complete extermi- 
nation. For the human being who ignores the 
laws of life, ruin no less, and finally, if the 
inharmony continues, physical extermination as 
complete. For the bird which, flying over the 
sea, weights its beak and its talons with carrion, 
or droops its wings and ceases with steady and 
tireless blows to beat the air, death in the wave 
below. For the spirit in human guise, which, 
floating in the universe of spirit which envelops 
it, over- weights itself with carnal pleasures or 
ceases to struggle ever upward, ceases to expand 
itself, or is content to droop its pinions, perhaps 
even to dive willfully downward, disaster no less 
sure and certain. 

Happily for us and for all things, however, the 
universe is more than permeated by this holy 
spirit of life and power. Every atom in every 
star thrills responsive to the energy which devel- 
oped it, and answers unerringly to the call which 
continues to animate it. Eight years before her 
last transit across the face of the sun, — one 
hundred and five years before the transit imme- 
diately preceding the last, — astronomers foretold 
the hour and the second when men might look 
into the heavens and behold the black circle of 
Venus upon the glowing disc of the sun. And at 
the very second prophesied we who looked saw 
the planet in her place. No human eye which 
beheld this sight last December* will ever look 
upon it again ; but those who come after us, and 
who look upward one hundred and twenty-one 
years hence, on the 7th of June, 2004, at the hour 
and second next again prophesied, will see the 



* December of 1882. This discourse was first delivered (in 
Rhode Island) in February of 1883. 



100 "The Holy Spirit." 

planet again at her post. And not a minute 
before that, and not a minute later. There are 
comets which have sprung upon the sight of men 
only to vanish again quickly, whose next coming, 
it is estimated, will be thousands of years hence. 
But they will come at their appointed time. 

This responsive action, as I have called it, on 
the part of all things, to the power which devel- 
oped and controls them, is seen everywhere. 
Water does not run up hill, nor does smoke settle 
in the valleys ; the one flows downward, the other 
ascends. Light and moisture from above, and 
the rich nourishment of the forces within the 
ground beneath, are necessary to the growth of 
the flower and the tree ; and the growing plant 
or sapling reaches upward its leaves and limbs to 
take the sunlight and the dew, and sends its roots 
downward into the soil. The roots do not grow 
upward nor the leaves and branches downward. 
Constrained by the calls of hunger, only by the 
satisfaction of which it can continue to live, the 
lion seeks its prey. So with all the lower animals 
— and so with man. 

So with man ! The developing spirit is Life. 
Coming into this Life, and accepting it, and 
striving to under starid themselves and their en- 
vironment, — impelled, indeed, to understand these 
things, by the structure of their being and their 
necessities, — men discover the way of continued 
existence and the path of progress. And they 
discover, moreover, that if they walk in the ap- 
pointed way, — that is, if they put themselves in 
unison with the environment of highest Nature 
about and in them, — live in the highest, truest 
and best accord and communion with Nature, — 
they find health and peace. 

This discovery of the Way of Life is not some- 
thing instantaneous, — it is a gradual discovery ; 
gradual in the case of individual men, and 
especially in the case of mankind as a whole. 



"The Holy Spirit:' 101 

But it ever goes on. Men have been thousands 
of years, scores on scores of thousands of years, 
in the process of this discovery. And it is only 
in these later times that the duty of men towards 
themselves, the duty of men in their own behalf, 
in the relation which they bear to the great spirit 
of life which fills the universe, is coming to be 
well understood. This divine spirit of life doesn't 
do everything. It requires co-operation. And 
men at iast are beginning vividly to realize that 
they must indeed work out their own salvation, 
bodily and spiritual. Moreover, just so far as 
they do this, — just so far as men are fortunate 
and hajDpy enough to learn or discover the laws 
of a prosperous and healthy life, bodily and 
mental, and put themselves in accord with these 
laws, just so far have they grand and sufficient 
reason, grander and more sufficient reason than 
ever before, to look upon the mighty Mystery of 
Being out of which they have come — the over- 
brooding spirit of the universe on which they 
are dependent every moment of their lives — as 
helper, protector, friend. Whereas, ignorant of 
the pathway, or refusing to walk in it, men come 
upon disease and suffering, meet poverty and 
misfortune, are unjust to each other ; — where- 
upon, in the unfortunate disguise of gods and 
ghosts, with which disguise misapprehending 
men have personified them, the varying manifes- 
tations of the infinite spirit of life meet con- 
tumely ! Men foolishly deny, and even curse, the 
false fdeal of deity they themselves have set up, 
for not being what a real, law-abiding deity could 
never be, and think they have denied the eternal 
life-spirit ! Or their icleal, still personalized, is 
feared as an enemy, as a taskmaster, and deemed 
heartless and cruel. 

Now, this, friends, manifestly, is the state of 
things in this universe. Manifestly, throughout 
the universe, there is the divine, progressive influ- 



102 u The Holy Spirit." 

ence of which I have spoken : the history of the 
world proves it. If it is not what men ignorantly 
may have deemed it, still it is. That it has its 
dwelling also in men, and is drawing men 
towards perfection — towards "righteousness" — 
the history of the world proves also. And by 
" righteousness " I mean Tightness. And not 
u spiritual " Tightness only — religion has not to 
do with the soul alone, but with the whole man ! 
Not spiritual Tightness alone, but physical Tight- 
ness, — bodily Tightness, that is, — and moral Tight- 
ness. Brightness of total existence ! 

For, just as the planet, as we have seen, is 
influenced to a perfect unison with its call to 
sweep through the eternal orbits ; just as the tree 
and the flower are influenced, by the environ- 
ment of Nature about them, to a perfect unison 
with that environment, and could not exist other- 
wise, — so surrounding man is there likewise an 
"environment" (so to speak), a series of persist- 
ently encircling influences, which forever creates 
in him — not in any supernatural way, not in any 
subternatural or preternatural or unnatural way, 
but which forever creates in him, by the recognized 
necessities of his highest and best existence, that 
tendency which the ages have long since proved 
is inherent in him : a tendency whereby, in all 
times and in all nations, under many and varying 
conditions, he has been urged to put himself in 
accord with the universe, — in accord with the uni- 
verse's physical and moral and spiritual forces : 
which is at the same time to put himself in accord 
with the infinite spirit of life and of power which 
is our source and our goal. 

To this end, — that men might come into this 
true communion with the eternal spirit of life as 
he saw it, — Jesus, after his own manner, labored. 
To this end, as they saw it and after other manners, 
consciously or unconsciously, labored Gautama 
the Buddha, and Mohammed, and every other of 



"The Holy Spirit." 103 

the sincere prophets and heroes of all time. To 
this end labor to-day, with earnest, loyal, sym- 
pathetic sonls, all of the sincere and reverent 
ones, even among the so-called sceptics, the so- 
called agnostics, the men of science and the up- 
holders of ethical-culture, — who are searching 
out what they honestly deem the true life-spirit ; 
who are disproving what they consider super- 
stitions and fallacies concerning "God" and the 
universe ; and who are laboring to make life truer 
and nobler and sweeter and better and higher by 
telling men how they may rise, how they may gain 
health and beauty and comfort and happiness, 
how they may best elevate themselves, and how 
elevate mankind as a whole. And all these — 
from Abraham, who sought * 'God ' ' in the best way 
he knew, down through Moses and Jesus and 
Gautama, and Darwin and Spencer and all the 
rest, — all these have been and are filled with one 
and the same "holy spirit" — the holy spirit of the 
universe's progressive life-force. 

"Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line 
Rightly severing that from thine, 
Which is human, which divine." 

Now, two things in conclusion, very briefly: 
I. First, concerning this present life in its 
material aspects. 

If this is the true "holy spirit," and if we 
become possessed of and animated by this spirit 
(as we certainly do) the moment we strive to put 
ourselves in accord with it and with its laws as I 
have endeavored to interpret it and its laws, then 
the sooner we endeavor — the sooner mankind as a 
race endeavors — towards the attainment of this 
end, the sooner we individually, and the sooner 
mankind as a race, will "have power." The 
sooner will there be increased health and happi- 
ness in this life here on earth ; the greater cer- 
tainty men will have of leaving to their children 



104 "The Holy Spirit." 

a legacy of health and happiness, thus doing 
something to make the world brighter and better, 
tending to relieve mankind from the woes — the 
poverty, the pain and the sorrow — which come 
from disease, from the manifold weaknesses of 
the body induced through ignorance, carelessness, 
licentiousness, intemperance and over-work. In 
a word, the sooner will the true Commonwealth 
of Light and Beauty come on earth, and peace, 
plenty and blessing have their home in human 
lives, all men helping each other as brothers. We 
shall ' ' receive power after that the holy spirit is 
come upon us." 

When a boy, in the church, I used often to 
wonder — and met others, thinking people, who 
wondered — that religion should be so " easy " a 
thing; that "salvation," so far as man is con- 
cerned, is something of mere receptivity, some- 
thing merely passive. ~No true man or woman 
wants something for nothing, or for a mere 
"thank-you." That which we deserve; that 
which we acquire ; that which, by favoring cir- 
cumstances, we are enabled to earn, however 
bitter or sorrowful the means, — that is truly ours, 
and that is worth something to us. There is no 
"salvation" in the mere mental acceptance of 
the fact of the existence of a "God," or of a 
supernatural " saviour," nor in merely calling 
upon their names. From many sources, which 
may well be called divine, we indeed have inspira- 
tion to good works, to purity, to perfection. But 
only so far as we manfully fight, struggling ever 
towards purity and perfection, are we "saved." 
And no man ever yet in this world was com- 
pletely saved. We all are in process of salvation. 
And " we have power after that the holy spirit is 
come upon us," — the holy spirit, the divine desire 
and impulse, to strive, ever, to enter into com- 
plete communion with the universe, and with that 
force which is our life. 



11 The Holy Spirit: ' 105 

II. Secondly and lastly, concerning the pres- 
ent life in its spiritual aspects. 

If this is the true holy spirit, we have, in con- 
templation of it, and by putting ourselves in true 
communion with it, abundant encouragement 
and inspiration for our souls. 

The mighty spirit out of which we have come, 
of which we are a part, and which one day will 
receive us back to itself — which already has 
received back to itself so many of our dear ones 
— is a spirit of goodness, of tenderness, of help- 
fulness, towards all who are in accord with it. 
True, the goodness and the tenderness of the 
universe are mingled at times with apparent 
harshness ; with a bitter severity which we can- 
not understand. But while we note — when con- 
sidered by long reaches — the constant progress of 
the world ; the evolution in mind and morals 
which, counting not by years, perhaps, but 
counting by centuries, by epochs, unceasingly 
goes on, marking the ever upward growth of 
men ; while we note about us the lavish life and 
beauty which runs up and down so many merid- 
ians of the globe and blossoms along so many 
parallels ; when we look upward at the expanse 
of the heavens, with its ten thousand worlds and 
systems of worlds, and note the order and beauty 
there — knowing as we do the chaos and compara- 
tive nothingness of the original mighty nebula 
from which all this has been evolved ; above all, 
when we look into our own souls, and note the 
grandeur, the mystery, the infinite possibilities 
which there exist, — into our souls, never satisfied 
with present attainment, looking always ahead 
to something more and better, believing always 
in something more and better : when we consider 
all this, and ponder it well, we are confident — 
confident enough to at least dream of a mighty 
future before us, a future of peace, of progress, 
of labor, of attainment. And we trust ! We 



106 "The Holy Spirit." 

trust ! Notwithstanding the doubt and the dark- 
ness, notwithstanding the pain and the suffering, 
notwithstauding our own weakness and ignor- 
ance and pettiness and frivolity, we trust ! 

" trust that somehow good 

Will be the final goal of ill, 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 

Defects of doubt and taints of blood." 

And while we know that now and here and for- 
ever we receive life and power, and shall con- 
tinue to receive life and power, in the exact 
degree in which we are in accord with the 
infinite spirit of life and power which fills the 
universe, — a spirit which forever (in the general 
if indeed not always in the particular) rebukes 
all wrong and blesses all right, — a spirit which, 
manifestly, even to our narrow, finite ken, is 
forever drawing all men nearer and nearer to 
what we dream of as perfection, — we are encour- 
aged to go on bravely, in faith and in hope. 

I, at least, for one, am willing, with the poet 
Whittier, to 

" trust that he [or it] which heeds 

The life that hides in mead and wold, 

Which hangs yon alder's crimson beads 
And stains these mosses green and gold, 
Will still, as it hath done, incline 
Its gracious care to me and mine, 
Grant what we seek aright, from wrong debar, 
And as the earth grows dark, make brighter 
every star." 

But, as I have endeavored to say before,— as I 
have endeavored to suggest all through this dis- 
course, — man himself must work. 

Here are all beneficent forces. Here is the 
eternal life-breath of the universe ever around us 
and within us— Is it not written in your law, " I 
said, Ye are Qods"? Here are all things for our 



"The Holy Spirit: 1 107 

physical and mental and moral and spiritual 
growth. One thing only is needful : that in us 
may be born the sublime desire and purpose to 
manifest our human divinity ! To live, as we 
should, aright. To make ourselves a providence 
to ourselves, and to our fellows. To build up, 
here and now, on earth, a noble and a lofty 
heaven, — a heaven of labor and faithful inquiry ; 
a heaven of ever new attainment ; a heaven of 
universal good-will, of unremitting love and 
endeavor in behalf of an ideal humanity. And 
truly, with such thought as this of a "holy spirit," 
with such belief as this, if we put our thought 
and belief into helpful act, there will come to us 
blessing and helpfulness and peace. While if we 
act not, — if we think and study and plan and 
struggle not, — then are our belief and our preach- 
ing vain, and we are yet in our sins. 



©tyer IDritmgs by VTiv. VOzst 



UPLIFTS OF HEART AND WILL: A Series 
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square 18mo., beveled edges. Price, postpaid, 50 

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PRESS NOTICES. 

"On purely rational grounds it is not easy to meet the 
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uncommon, and greatly deserving of respect. ,, — From a 
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"A man of gifts and graces making an effort to get out of 
the old and worn-out way of petitioning for special things 'to 
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VOICES OF YOUTH: ''Holiday Idlesse, and 
other Poems." New Red-Line Edition. Il- 
lustrated. Printed on heavy paper, with extra 
wide margins. Handsomely bound in appro- 
priately pictured covers illustrating the title- 
poem. Large square 12mo, 252 pages. Price, 
postpaid, $1.00. 

"Attractive, tasteful, elegant,— a beautiful gift-book. 
And its contents cannot fail to please the lovers of verse of 
the genuine sort. Mr.West is more than a verse-maker ; his 
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"Mr. West has undoubted poetic conceptions and sym- 
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— Congregationalist. 

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HYMNS LOOKING ONWARD, INWARD, UP- 
WARD. "Valuable as a collection of untheo- 
logical religious verse, even when not intended 
to be sung." Single copy, postpaid, 10 cents. 
More than ten copies, 5 cents each. 

"A pamphlet of Forty -Two Hymns, collected and arranged 
by James H. West. Older collections of church hymns 
furnishing little that he could use consistently with modern 
rational religious thought, this thin pamphlet was printed 
for temporary use, to serve until something larger and better 
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liberals as a whole. These hymns are of human hope and 



human endeavor, and are valuable as a collection of un- 
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sung."— Index. 

Says the poet Longfellow: "In the elder days of the 
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life.' " Not a bad text for a discourse on Church Singing. 
Compilers of hymn-books, too, might find here something to 
be regarded.— Unity. 

THE WORK OF A TRUE CHURCH. A paper 

devoted to a consideration of the needs of 

Humanity in the modern world. Pamphlet. 

Single copy, 6 cents. 

" When such an earnest utterance is made on this business 
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< < THE DIVINE SA TISFACTION." A Discourse 
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u Excellent verse, of a very genuine sort,— full of poetic 
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Christian Union. 

"The poems of Mr. West are more than entertaining, they 
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*** Any of the foregoing sent postpaid, on receipt of price, 
by CHARLES H. KERR & CO., Publishers, 175 Dearborn 
Street, Chicago. 



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